About 1,000 workers from Burma who had been working in Three Pagodas Pass near the Thai-Burmese border are now unemployed after ten factories closed last week due to a shortage of raw materials caused by flooding in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, according to border sources.

Burmese workers are working in Thai side from Three Pagodas Pass (Photo: Azan)

A resident of Three Pagodas Pass said, “About ten factories that produced plastic mobile phone packaging, textiles, sockets, underwear, wigs, and shoes have been closed temporarily.”

They began to close factories last week, and about ten factories have been closed as of today. It depends on the situation. We do not know how long it will be until they will open again,” added the resident.

We have heard that the places where they [Thai employers] store raw materials in Bangkok have been flooded. This is why they cannot send raw materials here, and we all have to stop working,” said a Burmese worker who works at a textile factory.

I found one factory that continues to provide money for their staff, while the others are not providing anything for their workers,” he said.

Many of the migrant factory workers are worried that they will have to go back to Burma if the factory closures continue for an extended period. However, according to sources, Thai employers have told workers that the factories will only be closed for about two weeks. 

Three Pagodas Pass is a town of a small-industry businesses where many Thai businessmen have invested in factories that rely on cheap labor from Burma. There are about 5,000 Burmese workers who travel to work on the Thai border every day, returning to their homes in Burma in the evening. There are around thirty factories in the town.