THAILAND'S fishing industry is looking for as many as 50,000 men to work on board fishing vessels.
Phithoon Damsakhon, chief of the Department of Employment's provincial branch of Ranong in southern Thailand, said the National Fisheries Association of Thailand needed men to work as skippers, mechanics and other crewmembers aboard fishing boats based in several coastal provinces.
Phithoon said tens of thousands of Myanmar migrant workers, earlier employed by the fishing industry either on shore or offshore, have left for their home country and many others may soon follow suit, Xinhua news agency reported.
"This has aggravated labour shortages in Thailand's fishing sector," he said, adding that over the last few years, many of those migrant workers had gradually upgraded from being unskilled workers to skilled ones until they left amid the Covid-19 global pandemic.
He suggested that locals who might be jobless due to the pandemic could take up fishing jobs available aboard seagoing vessels.
Many of the fishing vessels are now anchored and lying idle in Ranong and other coastal provinces.