41 stranded Thai workers return home today from embattled Myanmar town
Forty-one Thai workers who have been evacuated from the conflict zone in Laukkaing, a town in Myanmar’s Kokong Self-Administered Zone, will arrive at Tachileik near the border with Thailand on Saturday morning, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
Kokong town is in the north of Shan state near the border with China, where fighting between the Myanmar military and ethnic armed groups of the Brotherhood Alliance has been going on since last month.
Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said that Thai officials had been coordinating with their Myanmar counterparts to bring the stranded Thai workers in Laukkaing home as soon as possible.
The ministry had earlier reported that over 200 Thais were stranded amid the ongoing clashes after being conned into working for a Chinese call-centre gang in Laukkaing.
The repatriation mission, led by the Royal Thai Army, is using buses to transport the Thais from Laukkaing to Nanteng and then to Kengtung in Shan state, before dropping them off in Tachileik from where they can enter Thailand via the Mae Sai border checkpoint.
Parnpree said the ministry’s permanent secretary, Sarun Charoensuwan, on Friday met with Myanmar’s ambassador to Thailand, U Chit Swe, to discuss plans to bring the rest of the Thais home as soon as possible.
The ambassador promised that the Myanmar government would provide full support in the evacuation of the Thais, he added.
The ministry has also been coordinating with Chinese authority to secure assistance in the repatriation mission, said Parnpree.
