By Barbara Sibbald
While many businesses floundered during the COVID pandemic, a Thai home-based fishing net business went online to capture new customers. Being home-based, they worked under a roof outdoors and could easily space several meters apart. Jobs are still coming in.
“We’ve never stopped working,” said Nuchnapha Bamrungna, owner of the five-person Aum Mahn Baan Khun Nuch or Lucky Fishing Nets of Nuch’s Home.
Nuch is chairperson of the net-finishing workers at Lao Kwean Hug Village near Khon Kaen, which includes about 100 people in 80 families. Individual groups, including Nuch’s, sign their own contracts, but they work cooperatively.
“We all help one another to make contract quotas,” said Nuch, 51.
We sit cross-legged on a mat next to an elderly woman who is intently finishing one of the polyethylene nets manufactured at a near by factory. She hand-finishes it by stringing a line of floaters on top and lead weights at the bottom. It’s a time-consuming task; in a day, each worker can complete about five nets, each of which is 180 square meters.
For many years, they made traditional nets or “ton,” which were wood or metal tubular structures with netting spun around them — essentially fish traps.
Then in 1995, they were approached by factories in near-by Kwan Koan to hand-finish tops and bottoms – tasks that couldn’t be done mechanically. The factory owners taught them how to do it, and they were paid 20 bahts per net.
Soon after, the predecessor of HomeNet Thailand (HNT) invited Nuch’s villagers to a meeting and asked if they were registered with the government as informal workers. They weren’t. HNT, which is an affiliate of HomeNet International and StreetNet International, introduced the villagers to people at the Ministry of Labour.
“HomeNet encouraged us to negotiate with the government for recognition,” said Nuch, who was appointed chairperson of her village group to work with HNT. They became registered informal workers and as such were eligible for social security benefits, including a 600-baht per month pension at age 60, as well as medical care.
The government ministry also provided training and invited the village workers to train others to adopt their working model. But then, the government refused to give them access to an informal work fund for loans to improve businesses. HNT introduced them to the Chanel Foundation which served that purpose.
“It’s a way to improve our business by investing in tools or equipment,” said Nuch.
The villagers also learned to negotiate with net suppliers to get a raise of one-baht per year; it’s taken 30 years, but they now earn 50 bahts per net. It’s not an easy living. In her down time, Nuch’s group makes temple decorations, and she runs a small grocery in her workshop. Her son, aged 24, still lives at home; she also has two daughters aged 28 and 34.
Over the years, Nuch has became increasingly involved in HNT, especially on health-related matters. She holds a government position as the health volunteer for her village, as well as sitting on the health funding committee in the district and providing care for villagers with disabilities or injuries.
She was very concerned by her co-workers health problems, including back and muscle pain from sitting for long periods, and trigger-finger syndrome and stiff hands from constant use. There was also a feeling that something more serious was amiss, possibly from handling lead. At that time, they used their teeth to crimp the small strips of thin lead onto the bottom of nets.
In 2018, HNT introduced Nuch to the Ministry of Health which did blood tests and found levels of lead were over permissible limits for both adults and children working on nets. Nuch doesn’t mention any specific health problems related to these levels, but according to the World Health Organization, exposure to “very high levels” can severely damage the brain and central nervous system. At lower levels, it can permanently affect children’s brain development, cause anaemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxcity and toxicity to reproductive organs.
After testing, the workers started using pliers to cut and crimp the strips of lead.
The second largest fishing net factory, with whom they’d had a long-standing contract, stopped working with them.
“They didn’t like this testing,” said Nuch.
Fortunately, the villagers still had other contracts and made do. Then during COVID, Nuch’s youngest daughter, Rattikaran Sansoong, a university graduate, started recruiting new customers online. Rattikaran makes use of social media, including FaceBook, where satisfied customers post glowing reviews and photos of nets filled with fish.
In 2022, Nuch became president of HNT. In this broader role, she joined others in helping homeworkers improve their business skills, access government resources and training, and find help for their problems. She brokered many of these problems herself over the years, including, for example, difficulties accessing health care. “Mostly I was working kind of parallel with the government, especially the ministries of labour and health,” she said.
Internationally, Nuch attended meetings in Asia. “Our objective is to work together and be member-centred,” she said. She was surprised to learn how progressive Thailand is on matters such as social security. “Though we started from a fight at first, like everyone else.”
Nuch is also Thailand’s representative on HomeNet South East Asia, a network of or than 30,000 workers in six countries.
Her role as president recently ended, and she is now a member of the HTA committee. “I’m not giving it up at all,” she said.
