January 20, 2015 — A radical plan by the Thai government to put prisoners to work on the country's under-staffed fishing boats has been scrapped, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, following charges the scheme threatened inmates' rights.
Rights groups had also argued the idea would fail to address the fundamental causes of the labor shortage that fuels human trafficking in Thailand's fishing industry.
Thailand is the world's third-largest seafood exporter and its fishing industry employs more than 300,000 people, many of them illegal migrant workers from neighboring countries who are often subject to ill-treatment.
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