What's new in business news: September 18, 2013
Airport court for crimes against foreigners opens on Monday, seafood industry signs MoU to end child labour & computer ICT skills for latest technology needed urgently.
Airport court for crimes against foreigners opens on Monday, seafood industry signs MoU to end child labour & computer ICT skills for latest technology needed urgently.
An average of 250 crimes a day are reported at the busy Suvarnabhumi airport, and authorities believe a new fast-track court will be able to clear many cases so that passengers are not inconvenienced. (AFP file photo)
LABOUR
Seafood industry signs MoU to end child labour
In a move to address the problem of child labour in the seafood industry, 130 companies signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday pledging to adopt good labour practices (GLP) guidelines for workplace labour practices in the food and shrimp industries.
The move is aimed to help protect workers from practices such as child labour, forced labour, workplace discrimination and from sub-standard working conditions. The minimum age for employment under the Labour Protection Act is 15.
The companies signing the MoU are all regularly audited by other countries but the GLP should be implemented in the workplaces of other companies as well, labour activists suggest. Inspections by government agencies should be done intensively and factories should be aware of how subcontractors recruit workers.
The seafood sector exports around 1 million tonnes of seafood per year that is worth over 200 billion baht and the industry employs over 1 million people. Thailand is on the US's Tier 2 Watch List of countries producing goods by child labour or forced labour and risks being downgraded to Tier 3 which might lead to a range of trade sanctions.
[Read full story here ]
TOURISM
Airport court for crimes against foreigners opens on Monday
Suvarnabhumi airport's court to handle cases of crimes against foreigners at the airport will open on Monday. From January to August this year, 1,980 crimes, mostly petty crimes, were reported at Suvarnabhumi airport involving 1,047 suspects.
A video conference system will connect to Samut Prakan provincial court where judges will consider cases remotely. The court will be flexible and schedule cases conveniently for foreigners so they can leave the country when they need to. The aim of the airport court is to improve the tourism image of the country, reduce crimes at the airport and facilitate justice. Similar courts are planned for Don Mueang and Phuket airports.
[Read full story here ]
TECHNOLOGY
Computer ICT skills for latest technology needed urgently
Thailand remains short of workers skilled in emerging technologies such as mobile apps, cloud computing, big data, business intelligence and Facebook application development.
Existing general IT professionals number only 10,000. A survey of local IT professionals showed 76.4% saw the shortage of skilled people in these areas as a big challenge to their catching up with new technologies.
Organisations are prioritizing boosting the number of staff skilled in mobile app development both for Apple and Android devices. Thai firms are also short on cloud computing expertise with the top four cloud computing platforms in Thailand being Google's App Engine (22.4% share), Microsoft's Windows Azure (19%), Amazon Web Services (13%) and Heroku (5.6%).
[Read full story here ]
