Mizzima/RFA-Nov 18
Myanmar’s Ministry of Labor has issued a ruling allowing it to call back overseas workers for military service and has made the employment agencies that send workers abroad responsible for bringing them back if ordered to, an agency told Radio Free Asia on Friday. Since the military ousted a democratically elected government in a 2021 coup, many thousands of Myanmar people have moved abroad to escape a crumbling economy, violent turmoil and, since early this year, the threat of being drafted into the military as it struggles against anti-junta forces. While many try their luck and head abroad in the hope of finding work, many others find work through employment agencies, filling jobs overseas through deals Myanmar has struck with other governments.
The military’s ministry issued a regulation this week ordering job agencies to take full responsibility for their workers’ military service, and only to issue new contracts stipulating that workers and their foreign employers must agree that employees can be called back to serve, a member of staff at a Yangon-based employment agency told RFA. “Agencies have been given responsibility for their conscription. After we take that duty, the junta has a lot of ways of calling them back. It’s a lot of pressure,” said the agency employee who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter. Under the regulation, workers would only be called back after two years, the agency source said, while expressing concern that the time rule could easily be ignored. Nationwide, there are 21,000 conscripts at 23 training schools, the independent research group Burma Affairs and Conflict Study said in a report on Oct. 15. Read more at: https://eng.mizzima.com/2024/11/18/16392#google_vignette
