Overseas employment agencies thriving in Myanmar’s post-coup chaos

The names of sources have been changed in this article to protect their safety Rosy, a resident of a farming village on the eastern bank of the Sittaung River in Bago Region, was fed up. Living in a region hit hard by three years of conflict triggered by the military takeover in February 2021, she has seen her family’s livelihood dwindle almost to nothing. She decided it was finally time to make a move. Earlier this year, in a bid to escape the war and secure an income, the 38-year-old made up her mind to seek employment abroad. “My mother has passed away, but my father is still in good health. I want to go abroad while there’s still time. It will be useless to remain in the village,” she said. It wasn’t just the constant threat of junta artillery attacks that made her want to leave, she added: there was also the risk of being arrested by a regime that regarded everyone who wasn’t elderly as a possible member of the resistance. But as someone who had never even considered going abroad for work before, Rosy needed help. So, at the end of January, she moved to Yangon to find an agency that could find her a job in neighbouring Thailand, the most popular destination for Myanmar nationals looking for work outside of their own country. Since the coup, the number of agencies promising opportunities abroad has increased significantly. There are now around 500 registered companies in Myanmar offering services related to overseas employment, or nearly twice as many as existed before the military seized power. Indeed, in a country that has seen most businesses struggle to stay afloat amid the ongoing chaos, it is one of the few industries to see real growth in recent years. Rosy found an agency through a broker. It wasn’t difficult. The hard part was finding the money needed to pay for their services. “According to their contract, I had to pay them 3.8 million kyat [US$1,800], but when extra fees are added, it came to around 4.3 million kyat,” she said. To pay for this, she had to borrow the money at the extortionate rate of 10 percent per month. That means that every month she spends waiting for a job placement—her contract states that this can take up to 90 days—adds to her already huge financial burden. “The interest has already started building up. Ten percent is not cheap. Since I borrowed 4 million kyat, that means I have to pay an extra 400,000 kyat a month,” she complained. A month after registering with the agency, she is still in Myanmar waiting to see what kind of job will materialise for her. Not only does she have no idea when she will be able to leave, she is also completely in the dark about what she will be expected to do and how much she will be paid. People queue outside the passport office in Yangon on August 24, 2022 (Myanmar Now) No guarantees Even those who go through the proper channels to secure work permits and other documents often find themselves in difficult situations, with few guarantees that they will be treated fairly by their employers. The experience of a group of nearly 100 workers who arrived in Thailand in late March is far from unusual. After signing contracts with an employment agency in Yangon’s Okkalapa Township, they were sent to Chanthaburi, a town near Thailand’s border with Cambodia, to start work at a fruit-packing factory. Once they got there, however, they learned that the factory was not willing to pay them the agreed-upon rate of 330 baht ($9) a day, plus 62 baht for overtime. So instead of starting the new jobs that they had been promised, they were simply dumped on the side of a nearby road. For one woman who said she had waited seven months to start earning money in Thailand so that she could begin repaying the debt she incurred to get there, it was a devastating blow. “I feel like ending my life. The reality is completely different from what I expected,” she said. “They’re exploiting us,” she added, referring to the agencies that collect large sums from desperate job-seekers willing to borrow at high interest rates just to escape their situation in Myanmar. In the end, after lodging a complaint with a labour organisation for Myanmar nationals working in Thailand, around half of the workers were given jobs at the fruit-packing plant, while the others were hired by a sardine-canning factory. But working and living conditions are poor and most want to change their jobs, they said. “We see a lot of people in trouble like this,” said Mone Taing, a member of a support group for Myanmar workers in Thailand. The reason, he said, is that agencies are only interested in sending as many workers as they can, without regard for the quality of the jobs on offer or their clients’ rights. In many cases, he said, workers end up being sent to companies other than the ones they were told had hired them. “There are not that many job vacancies for [Myanmar workers] in Thailand right now, so people are often directed to workplaces other than the ones specified in their contracts,” he said. Stiff competition For those seeking work further afield, the biggest obstacle to finding gainful employment is competition, which has only intensified in recent years due to the deteriorating state of Myanmar’s economy. “In the past, if there were 50 jobs up for grabs, there would be 100 applicants. Now, there are a thousand people applying for those jobs,” said Ko Nan, a resident of Yangon’s Thaketa Township who has set his sights on finding employment in South Korea. Since 2016, South Korea has actively recruited workers in Myanmar to meet its labour needs in the manufacturing, agriculture, and construction sectors. More recently, it has begun seeking suitable candidates to work in the service sector. Over the past year, more than 70,000 people in Myanmar have taken a standardised Korean-language proficiency test in hopes of finding employment in one of Asia’ most advanced economies. Most of those who go to South Korea do so through the junta’s official overseas employment agency, according to statistics released by the regime-controlled ministry of labour. Last year, a total of 10,611 were sent to the country, the ministry’s figures show. This year, the quota of 11,000 workers eligible to go has already been reached. But even South Korea, which faces severe labour shortages due to its rapidly ageing population, can only absorb so many foreign workers. And the number who would like to leave Myanmar is vastly more than its richer Asian neighbours can use. “The people of this country simply want to get out. The military coup intensified that desire, and now the conscription law is making young adults even more keen to leave,” said one overseas employment agent, referring to the regime’s plan, announced earlier this year, to start drafting civilians into military service. This has created a boom for the overseas employment business, which struggled to survive during the Covid-19 pandemic, and was also hit hard, at least early on, by the 2021 coup. In the wake of the military takeover, some overseas employment agencies refused to pay their licence fees in protest, resulting in their closure by the regime. Now, more than three years later, the industry has more investors than ever willing to pay the 30 million kyat ($14,270) licence fee to send workers to Thailand (or the 25 million kyat fee for agencies that specialise in other countries), plus provide proof of financial assets totalling 100 million kyat. Cronies close to the regime are among those cashing in on the industry. Fewer job vacancies On March 22, statistics released by the regime’s ministry of labour showed that a total of 167,926 Myanmar nationals had left the country for work in the first 11 months of the 2023-24 fiscal year. While the number who went abroad in the first month of this period was only around 9,000, by February of this year—after the conscription announcement had been made—the monthly figure had more than doubled to 18,950. This surge in demand for overseas employment comes at a time when many economies are still feeling the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reduced the need for foreign workers in many countries. “There aren’t many countries with strong economies at the moment due to ongoing struggles caused by the pandemic. They are gradually recovering, but have yet to return to their previous conditions. Consequently, agencies are facing a shortage of job vacancies,” said the owner of one employment agency in Yangon. He added that a decision by Malaysia to halt Myanmar worker recruitment from the end of March, and moves by Thailand to impose new restrictions on hiring foreigners, were making matters even worse. This means that agencies are competing for a limited number of job vacancies, leading to lower standards and shadier practices, he said. The bottom line, however, is that as long as demand for overseas jobs remains strong, there will be money to be made. The scarcer employment opportunities become, the more people will be prepared to pay for them. But as is often the case in military-ruled Myanmar, it is often the least scrupulous who profit most.

Overseas employment agencies thriving in Myanmar’s post-coup chaos

While most other businesses struggle, companies promising jobs abroad are doing a roaring trade

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