[ad_1]
SAMUT SAKHON – Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha on Monday blamed a coronavirus outbreak related to the kingdom’s largest seafood market on low-paid migrant workers employed in the country’s lucrative shrimp industry.
Thailand has been on high alert since Thursday when a 67-year-old shrimp seller from the Mahachai market tested positive for coronavirus.
Contact tracing and mass testing found more than 800 cases so far linked to the site, a major outbreak for a country that previously had only 4,000 confirmed infections.
Most of the new cases are workers from Myanmar, working on shrimp boats and processing factories linked to the multibillion-dollar Thai fishing industry.
On Monday, Prayut blamed the outbreak on factories employing illegal immigrant workers, whom he accused of illegally crossing the porous border between Myanmar and Thailand.
“They got away and came back in,” he said.
Thailand shares a 2,400-kilometer (1,500-mile) border with Myanmar, which has seen an alarming increase since August and still records about 1,000 new cases a day.
“I have told the authorities that there must be a system to track the workers,” he said, adding that he was hopeful that the situation would improve in a week.
Health officials said the infection rate in the Mahachai market is “around 42 percent.”
The market and its surroundings have been closed since Saturday and the thousands who live there are unable to leave.
On Monday, the market was surrounded by barbed wire and authorities distributed food to quarantined workers inside.
Myanmar shrimp transporter Min Min Tun said it was “unfair and one-sided” for Thais to blame them without evidence.
He added that no information has been provided on who tested positive, which raised fear in the worker community.
“We could all be infected because we don’t have the information who to avoid and where not to go,” he said.
Thailand’s economy relies heavily on millions of low-wage workers from neighboring Myanmar and Cambodia, who keep the kingdom’s seafood, manufacturing, construction and service sectors active.
But the migrant workforce faces widespread discrimination, and the outbreak has ignited anti-Myanmar sentiment among Thais, including those who live and work in the Burmese community in Mahachai.
“I would not go near them under any circumstances,” said food vendor Maneerat Jekpan who works out of the market and admitted she was “anti-Burmese.”
Despite her animosity, she still brought food to quarantined workers because she was “worried that they would have nothing to eat.”
RELATED VIDEO
Thailand, COVID-19, coronavirus, Thailand COVID-19, Thailand coronavirus, Thailand outbreak, seafood market, Thailand seafood market, migrant workers, Thailand migrant workers, Prayut Chan-O-Cha, Mahachai market, thailand market
[ad_2]