Max Tunon, Senior Programme Officer / Coordinator of the GMS TRIANGLE project (Tripartite Action to Protect Migrant Workers within and from the Greater Mekong Subregion from Labour Exploitation

Imagine that you had a family to feed and moving abroad was your only option to earn a decent wage — but you didn’t know where or how to find work overseas. Or imagine that your daughter works abroad but that you haven’t had any word from her for months and months.

Or ask yourself what you’d do if you were injured at work a long way from home, with a hospital bill you couldn’t afford and an employer who refused to pay you as much as you’d agreed.

Where would you turn for help?

Migrant workers receive information and training at the Migrant Worker Resource Centre run by the Foundation for AIDS Rights (FAR), in Rayong Province in the south of Thailand. FAR works on health and labour rights issues, targeting the Cambodian migrant community.

Many of you reading this would go to a friend, family member or a trusted government office. But millions of migrants across the Asia Pacific region have a much harder time finding assistance. Recognizing this gap, the ILO has set up some 23 Migrant Worker Resource Centres (MRCs) in six Southeast Asian countries.

One of the most effective ways to combat widely recognized abuses (including underpayment of wages, confiscation of passports, substandard working conditions, and confinement in the workplace) is to ensure that migrant workers are equipped with knowledge and strategies to safeguard their labour and human rights.

MRC staff are counselors, confidants and community leaders who encourage and enable migrant workers to understand and assert their rights while minimizing their exposure to widespread exploitative practices.

“Before I came to this centre, I didn’t know that my new employer was not allowed to keep my passport. It was only during counselling that this was made clear to me.”

When exploitation can’t be avoided or has already been suffered, MRCs can help migrant workers obtain access to justice. MRCs serve as ad hoc complaints departments, linking migrant workers with legal-aid service providers or official channels for lodging complaints. The MRCs are integrated into government-run employment service centres and are also run by trade unions and NGOs. They have different focuses, in terms of gender and nationality or ethnicity, sectors of work, and type of interventions.

In just four years, MRCs funded by the ILO’s GMS Triangle Project, have already benefitted over 50,000 migrant workers. Through MRC referrals and legal assistance, migrant workers have been awarded around USD$ 1.2 million in compensation.

Now, MRCs are beginning to evolve beyond legal and counseling services to become trusted community centres. For example, one MRC in Cambodia received the family of a rape victim who was looking for assistance. While that’s not the core focus of MRCs, it shows what happens when a service gains the trust of community and can adapt to local it needs—it becomes a first-stop for anyone seeking help.

MRCs are also beginning to yield some long-term outcomes. Almost 90 per cent of sample of clients at Cambodian and Vietnamese MRCs who migrated through legal channels said that counseling from MRC staff influenced their decision not to migrate through irregular channels—hence reducing their risk of being exploited.

MRC services are also clearly linked to better protection and knowledge of rights for potential migrant workers. One beneficiary who was interviewed after receiving counselling at the Bac Ninh MRC in Viet Nam said: “Before I came to this centre, I didn’t know that my new employer was not allowed to keep my passport. It was only during counselling that this was made clear to me.”

ILO Director-General Guy Ryder recently met migrant workers from Myanmar an MRC in Samut Prakarn Province, Thailand. This centre run by Thai trade unions aims to improve support services and access to justice for migrant workers.

MRCs also play a secondary function: revealing trends in the types of abuses faced by migrants as well as laws which aren’t being adequately enforced.

This information provides invaluable evidence in advocating for improved laws, policies and programmes.

To further the reach of the MRCs, the ILO has published an MRC Operations Manual in several languages as a resource for any organisation wanting to establish support services for migrant workers.

In the future, the ILO envisages MRCs growing into social and community hubs, enabling peer-to-peer learning, and providing important services including document storage and free Skype to the families of those who are working abroad. Regular contact via MRC resources and networks can ensure that we know something has gone wrong as soon as it goes wrong. And if it does, the MRC is there to help.

Marcia Poole, ILO Director of Communications

These days, they do it with a smile and wait patiently for you to finish your dinner.   Well, at least the two young officers of Myanmar’s Special Police branch in Mawlamyinegyun did. They accosted us at the modest restaurant on the banks of the Irrawaddy within an hour of our arrival in the small, dusty town.  They wanted to see our passports and write down our names, employer’s name and, most importantly, what we were doing in town. This, despite having been informed in advance of our visit to the ILO’s cyclone recovery infrastructure project. 

I was told by my colleague from the ILO Office in Myanmar that they were probably just being cautious, wanting to make sure they wouldn’t get into trouble with their superiors.

The following day, we took a trip on a fishing boat down the river to Maeikthalinkune, one of the villages where the ILO has built footpaths and jetties. The village headman joined our meeting with former project workers and community leaders and took notes. He too asked us to write down our names and reason for visiting the village. And when a colleague asked the men whether they still needed permission to travel outside the village, (as was the case before the 2010 election), the headman jumped in and gave us a slightly non sequitur answer, saying that after the election every headman was sent on compulsory training on such matters as forced labour and told they faced prison if they forced people to work.

These two episodes reminded me of my first visits to Myanmar.  When I first went there, back in the mid-90’s, Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest; it was impossible to meet openly the members of her party, the National League for Democracy, and most student leaders and other activists were in exile in Thailand.

On the streets of Yangon, then Myanmar’s capital, passers-by eyed the few Western faces, (mostly tourists), with curiosity and, sometimes, gave the distinct expression of being eager to talk.  But they dared not approach visitors for fear of being watched. Those brave enough to talk with foreigners were usually visited in the middle of the night by military intelligence or special police officers.

The international radio services of the BBC, Voice of America and others were jammed.

Yangon felt trapped in a time bubble, with its neglected colonial buildings, old cars and traditional tea shops where men in sarongs and flip-flops sat on small wooden chairs on the pavement and drank sugary tea, their grin revealing teeth stained red from the chewing of betel leaves.

I visited Yangon again in late 1995, after Aung San Suu Kyi  had been released from house arrest. I was allowed to meet her at her beautiful, half-empty home by the lake. More importantly, she had been addressing crowds that would gather outside her gate on week-ends. They came in their thousands – old and young, Buddhist monks and activists or ordinary men and women, all in thrall of ‘the Lady’. You could feel the energy and the exhilaration in the air. And you could feel too the prying eyes and long lenses of military intelligence officers and plainclothes policemen.

Nowadays the media are free. The news channels from the BBC and other global broadcasters are accessible in hotel rooms.

And people in Yangon are no longer afraid to talk. But they remain cautious: “We’ve had false starts before,” someone tells me.

Yet, this time it does seem different. Since former general- turned- president, Thein Sein, came to power following the controversial 2010 elections, the speed and depth of reform has surprised even the regime’s critics.

At the same time, Aung San Suu Kyi recently declared her wish to run for president in 2015, (which would require a constitutional amendment). The Nobel Peace laureate is revered among the country’s Burman majority and considered a democracy icon around the world. But as she makes the transition from hero to politician, running for office, she’s begun to attract the first criticisms, not least for her reticence about the Rohingya – a Muslim ethnic minority group not recognised as Myanmar citizens under the country’s constitution.

The ethnic tensions can yet derail the democratisation process.

Much else could go wrong too, analysts say, from the commitment to democratic reform among the military and top leaders other than Thein Sein, to the country’s dire need to make up for time lost since the first military rulers introduced the “Burmese way to socialism” back in 1962.

But that’s for another day.

The Special Police officers who took down our names left with a hand-shake.

They may or may not have watched us discreetly while we went about town. For now, all that’s visible, whether in Yangon or Maeikthalinkune, is the sense of possibility that the future brings.

Read the special report on Myanmar in the World of Work special 2013 issue

Steve Marshall

By Steve Marshall, ILO’s liaison officer in Yangon, Myanmar

A view from Yangon: ILO’s liaison officer Steve Marshall talks about the changes he is witnessing in Myanmar

Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar. © A.Lwin Digital

Watch and Listen: Reform process in Myanmar is irreversible, says ILO expert