"Probe into Thai fishing standards," 04 April 2018

European Union inspectors will begin visiting Thai fishing ports... as part of a monitoring effort that has the potential to impact tens of thousands of Cambodian workers.

The EU teams are set to visit random Port In, Port Out (PIPO) offices designed to keep track of fishermen in order to prevent labour issues, which have been rampant in the Thai fishing industry.

The European Commission issued a “yellow card” on the notorious industry in 2015 – warning that if improvements were not made an import ban could be imposed. The inspection results and other findings are likely to determine if such a measure is taken.

...Deputy Prime Minister Chatchai Sarikulya was optimistic ahead of the inspection, saying the Thai Labour Ministry had registered about 1 million migrant fishery workers, among them tens of thousands of Cambodians.

But a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published earlier this year found that the Thai labour “inspection regime is largely a theatrical exercise for international consumption”, noting that under the PIPO system, “officials speak to ship captains and boat owners and check documents but rarely conduct interviews with migrant fishers”, meaning cases of trafficking could simply fall through the cracks.