Medical kits are now on 100 boats in the Songkhla region in Thailand after the Fishers’ Rights Network successfully sought ILO funding for pilot project.
Following a Tripartite meeting in Songkhla in October, where 17 FRN activists highlighted the major issues facing fishers, the ILO agreed to fund the a pilot project to distribute medical kits to boats in the region.
The activists raised the issues of medicine or first aid kits on most vessels, no copies of employment contracts available in migrant fishers own languages, and the unreasonably high costs of immigration/identity documents (passports and pink cards) leading to fishers being bound to the vessels by debt.
In addition to distributing the medical kits the FRN also trained 220 fishers in wound management and basic CPR, and reached over 898 fishers in total.
