The military regime has tasked overseas employment agencies with bringing Myanmar migrant workers back home when they are called up for mandatory military service.
A new provision added by the junta in May to the standard contract between employment agencies and workers requires the recruiters to “do what is necessary” if a worker is called up while working abroad.
One recruiter said: “Previously, the regime said employment agencies must ‘assist’ workers in remitting their salaries back to families through the official banking system, but now they say we must take responsibility for that. We have also been assigned to bring back potential conscripts. Surely that’s not our problem.”
The regime will not bring migrant workers back during two-year contract, but employment agencies must make sure they come back once the contract expires if they are called up, he said.
“But I’m afraid that the regime won’t care about the rules and pressure employment agencies any time it needs conscripts,” he added.
Employment agencies say recruiters are already sending fewer workers abroad due to the new restrictions, and the labor pool has shrunk as the regime bars men aged between 22 and 32 from going abroad.
The conscription law has caused a mass exodus of young people to foreign countries, mostly by illegally crossing the border, and as a result young undocumented migrant workers are losing their labor rights.
One employment agency owner said: “Now we can only recruit men aged 18 to 22 or over 32. But foreign employers usually don’t accept workers over 35, and we’ve had to negotiate with them to accept workers up to 40 years of age.”
Since introducing mandatory military service in February for men aged between 18 and 35, the regime has trained six batches of conscripts and is now working to draft a seventh batch.
Desperate to bolster its dwindling army, the junta has slapped restrictions on young people leaving the country by air, and even young vacationers who want to visit foreign countries are turned back at Yangon International Airport.
The regime has also doubled down on remittance rules introduced in September last year that require migrant workers to send back 25 percent of their monthly salaries through the country’s official banking system. Employment agencies are required to make sure employees remit their salaries, and the Labor Ministry has warned that those who fail to comply will be denied visa renewal and new work permits.
Earlier this month, the junta complained that 292 of Myanmar’s more than 500 overseas employment agencies have still not presented remittance documents for workers they sent abroad.
Myanmar has various government-to-government arrangements with the top destinations for labor export—Thailand, Japan, Korea, and the Middle East. But many potential workers prefer to cross the border illegally, be it to dodge the junta’s conscription law and flawed policies or because they lack the necessary qualifications, recruiters say.
