The regime’s Labor Ministry has ordered employment agencies to submit their lists of Myanmar migrant workers to the central bank and Foreign Ministry.
The order was issued late last month in the wake of new rules requiring migrant workers to remit a quarter of their wages through the junta-run banking system.
There are 484 local and foreign employment agencies in Myanmar, according to the ministry. It threatened to take legal action against 70 agencies it said had still not submitted migrant worker lists.
Agencies were required to submit the lists every three or six months under the now ousted civilian NLD government, but the junta has changed this to the first five days of every month. Non-compliant agencies will be suspended, warned, and then dissolved if they fail to submit lists again, said the ministry.
“The difference now is that we have to submit the lists to the Central Bank of Myanmar and Foreign Ministry too,” an employment agency manager said.
The two junta agencies will presumably use the lists to check that remittances are being sent back home, the manager added.
“They are starved of foreign currency. So, they are targeting remittances of migrant workers by putting pressure on employment agencies.”
Last month, the regime demanded that expatriate workers remit at least 25 percent of their foreign currency income back home through the country’s banking system.
Migrant workers who do not comply will be barred from working overseas for three years after their current work permit expires, the announcement warned. The regulation took effect on September 1.
On September 23, the regime made changes to the tax law, forcing Myanmar migrant workers to pay a tax of at least 10 percent on incomes earned in other countries.
The top destinations for Myanmar migrant workers are Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea, under memoranda of understanding between governments. Recruitment of Myanmar workers in Thailand and Malaysia is now declining, according to employment agencies.
