Phuket Bar Raids Coming in Underage Crackdown
Phuket Bar Raids Coming in Underage Crackdown
Pathomporn Kaenkrachang
Saturday, April 23, 2011
SECRET RAIDS will be carried out at night soon in Phuket bars, restaurants, spas, massages parlors and coffee clubs in a search for underage workers, a meeting heard yesterday.
The chief of the Phuket Provincial Office of Labor Protection and Welfare, Kittipong Laonipon, undertook to make the raids with police following the urging of Vice Governor Niwit Aroonrat.
Chief Kittipong acknowledged that the department had checked restaurants and stores in daylight for child workers, but had never coordinated night-time raids. Children under 18 are not permitted to work after dark.
''I can tell you there are many underage workers in garden restaurants around Phuket at night,'' the vice governor said. ''It really is time you mounted some raids to end what's happening on the island once night falls.''
When schools were closed, the number of underage part-time workers increases, and many children under 15, especially Burmese, were said to follow their parents at an early age into the construction business on Phuket, where labor is always in demand.
More research is to be carried out but the raids will come as soon as the department has met with police and perhaps the governor's own small force, Khun Kittipong said.
He added that it was sometimes impossible to make progress without the help of police.
With Phuket bars, he said, a young ''hostess'' might tell a department inspector that she was a customer, but only a police officer could take action over the presence of underage people in bars as customers.
A total of 118,293 people - 61,164 males and 57,036 females - were currently registered for work on Phuket with the Labor office. Ninety-three people between the age of 15 and 18 are also registered.
The chief executive of the Phuket Provincial Administrative Office, Paiboon Upatising, suggested that when people registered for work, they should also be given the opportunity to register as Phuket citizens.
Because only about half the Thais who live and work on Phuket are registered as Phuket citizens, Phuket's budget allocation from the national government is based on a false figure of about 320,000 registered citizens.
The addition of an extra 10 percent or 20 percent would make a huge difference to the income that provides for Phuket's infrastructure.
phuketwan.com
