A tough life working in a tom yam kung restaurant in Malaysia
Thai-owned tom yum kung (hot and spicy shrimp soup) restaurants are doing a brisk business in Malaysia and bringing home billions of baht in revenue each year.
But for the owners of the restaurants and their Thai employees, it is really a hard work with sleepless nights. Worse still, many of the Thai workers the majority of them being Thai-Malay Muslims have to play hide-and-seek with Malaysian immigration officers because they do not have proper work permits or have overstayed their visas.
There are several hundreds of tom yum kung restaurants in Malaysia, especially in Kuala Lumpur, operated mostly by Thai-Malay Muslims in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. The business has provided jobs to tens of thousands Thai-Malay and Isan workers who left homes and their families in search of green pasture in Malaysia.
Since the March 31 car-bomb attacks in Hat Yai and Yala which left 14 people dead and over 100 wounded, the Thai-owned tom yum kung restaurants have attracted media attention because they were unfortunately linked to the violent incidents following a reported "peace" talk between Pol Colonel Thawee Sodsong, secretary-general of Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre, and representatives of the tom yum kung business who were suspected to have links with the separatist groups in the deep South.
Pol Col Thawee, however, denied that there was a peace talk with the separatists. He insisted that his meeting with the tom yum kung people was intended to help the Thai workers, many of them have work permit problem.
In order to get an accurate perspective of the people involved in the tom yum kung business, the Isra news agency recently dispatched a reporter to Kuala Lumpur to talk with some restaurant operators and the Thai employees.
The followings are excerpts of the interviews.
Mrs Nureesan Masa who owns and operates a tom yum kung restaurant on Rayamuda Road in Kuala Lumpor said she took over the premise from her elder brother 11 years ago after the latter returned to southern Thailand to be with his family. Her brother opened the restaurant since 1987.
Mrs Nureesan said that it was a misconception that operating the restaurant was an easy and comfortable way to make quick money.
"It is not at all a comfortable job," she said, adding that she earned approximately 50,000 baht a day. "On the surface of it, it looks like a huge amount of income. But out of the 50,000 baht income, the costs amount to 30,000 baht. On top of that, there are other expenses such as rental fees, wages for my staff, water and electricity bills. The final net take-home income is not huge. And if some days the shop is closed I will be very stressed," she admitted.
It is an open fact that many Thai workers do not have proper work permits and they have to return to the Thai border in Betong district of Yala, Padang Besar of Songkhla or Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat to have their tourist visas revenwed every 30 days because the visas are valid for only 30 days. And this means that the restaurants will have to bear the costs of renewing the vasas for their workers and if most of the workers of a restaurant have to get their visas renewed at the same time, it means that the restaurant in question will have to close down a day or two.
Mrs Nureesan said that running the restaurant was an exhaustive job. "I have to get up at five in the morning to go to the nearest market to fetch the food. At ten in the morning, customers will start arriving to order food."
She said she sold khao kaeng (rice and curry) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. after which the menu will be switched to tom yum kung and other dishes made to order. The shop closes at 2 a.m. of the next morning and it is until 3 a.m. after everything is cleaned up I go to bed only to wake up again two hours afterward to begin another day of work.
Although the job is exhaustive, Mrs Nureesan admitted it is much better than the condition at home where there is no job at all and nothing to eat and to feed the family.
Commenting on the recent visit to Malaysia of Pol Colonel Thawee, she said that the SBPAC had good intention to help the Thai workers. She added she felt saddened that the visit was misinterpreted.
Jaewae Hayeewae, 28, who is working as a cook at one of the tom yum kung restaurants. He said that he came to work in Malaysia since he was 17 starting as a dish washer on 100 baht wage a day and eventually was upgraded to become a waiter earning 200 baht a day.
Jaewae said that he was able to save money and each time he returned home he would give his mother 70,000-80,000 baht of his savings. As a cook now, he is earning 700 baht a day.
To get that amount of money as a cook, he said he has to stand working from the time the shop opens its door until it is closed. He admitted that he rarely ventured out of the restaurant fearing that he might get caught by immigration officers and the only time he ventured out was to return home in Pattani.
Jaewae said he would prefer to stay home with his family if there was job there for him. Had he been at home, he said he would have ended up in drug business.
Not only Thai-Malay Muslims have found jobs working in tom yum kung restaurants in Malaysia. There are also workers from Isan.
43-year old Meth from Ubon Ratchathani now works as a cook with Mrs Nureesan. He used to work as a cook at the Por Kung Pao restaurant in Bangkok but spent most of his earnings on drinking.
But since he has been working in Malaysia, he has stopped drinking and smoking. After having worked in Malaysia for 12 years now, he can afford to send money to his family at about 20,000-30,000 baht a month.
Meth used to have a work permit. But since there was an overhaul of the work permit issuance system, he admitted that it was difficult to get one and he decided to work illegally.
He praised the SBPAC for trying to help Thai workers obtain work permits in Malaysia.
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Caption;
1 Tom yum kung restaurant
2 Mrs Nureesan Masa
3 Mr Meth,43-year old from Ubon Ratchathani province in Thailand