The Roles of Agencies Involved in Allowing Philippine Skilled Laborers to Work in Thailand

Abstract

This research aims to 1) study the tasks and the roles of agencies involved in managing the migration of Philippine skilled laborers to work in Thailand, 2) study the working processes relating to the migration of Philippine skilled laborers to work in Thailand. In this study, the researchers used qualitative research methods by studying documents concerning the roles and the processes of agencies involved in allowing Philippine skilled laborers to work in Thailand and in-depth interviews with executives, government officers / staff, administrators of establishments that possesses Philippine skilled laborers and administrators involved in professional councils, including the Council of Engineers and the Teachers’ Council of Thailand. For data collection, the researchers used tools to collect data, which included structured interviews and a research tool quality investigation by using three experts to check content validity. For the analysis of qualitative data, the research used method to interpret and summarize the data in the form of induction. The research results indicated that if Philippine skilled laborers would like to come to work in Thailand, they must deal with three major sectors, namely, establishments which have officers whose responsibilities include hiring laborers, government sectors whose responsibility it is to issue work permits to laborers and professional councils that Philippine laborers are working under (in case those laborers need to use professional licenses). The suggestions from this research are as follows: 1) Government sectors should improve the working processes of service for alien laborers by reducing procedures or setting up one stop service that can perform comprehensive services at a single point. At any rate, the improvement will support laborers to obtain services conveniently and rapidly; 2) There should be the development of information systems for alien laborers who came to work in Thailand to be more effective which would include linking laborers information between agencies by creating a unique system to enable involved agencies to mutually use updated labor information efficiently with the most benefit for management.