Difficulties of migrant domestic workers in Thailand

On the difficulties migrant domestic workers in Thailand face:

...rights groups say female migrant domestic workers [in Thailand] continue to face abuses behind closed doors. For laborers from Myanmar... life without a proper work permit constrains her daily travel. “I never got any days off. If I wanted to go outside, I had to ask permission. Sometimes I needed to go help my relatives who were sick. I asked for time off and they told me I had to finish my work and could only go for one or two hours and had to come back right away,” she said... Isolation and long hours are common obstacles that domestic workers face in finding the time to seek local support networks for help... Migrant aid worker Pim Saenwee [said,] “It’s hard for us to get connected with the domestic workers because they’re kept in private houses. For outsiders like us, it’s hard to get in, and hard for them to get out. In past, many maids are abused with wages and rights abuse and sexual abuse... [ILO] says more than a quarter of women employed in Asia work more than 48 hours a week... “It’s a gender issue that domestic work is not seen as work because it's something that women do and housewives are not paid to do all the work that they do. So then you bring in somebody from outside to do that work and it's still not considered work and still not protected by labor laws,” [said ILO migrant labor expert Jackie Pollock].

"Domestic Workers from Myanmar Overworked in Thailand," VOA, 22 March, 2016