The five employees are officials in-charge of the company contract at Mawlmyine Cement Limited (MCL), which is located in Kyaikmayaw Township, Mon State.

“Since they haven’t broken immigration law before, they petitioned to the union minister for a pardon from deportation. Accordingly, the union minister granted the pardon only if they promised to sign up, follow the country’s laws and rules and avoid breaking any of them again,” said U Shein Win, head of Mon State’s Ministry of Immigration and Population.

U Shein Win continued to explain that a foreigner could face charges under the 1947 Immigration Law Act article 13 (1) for breaking any law in the country and if he/she committed a crime, he/she would violate article 7 (1) of the 1947 act and must be deported from the country. However, whether to deport the individual or pardon them would be decided by the Union Government.

Five officials in-charge of MCL’s company contract failed to report to the township immigration office regarding 11 Chinese employees who arrived on September to work at MCL, and as a result, the five officials were fined 100,000 Kyat each for violating the 1940 Foreign Registration Law act article 5 (1) and a further 300,000 Kyat each for breaking the 1947 Immigration Law act article 13 (1).

“This is the first time that we have charged foreign employees at MCL for breaking the visa rules. It is in the law that we have to charge them since they failed to report a guest list and we detected that,” said U Ko Ko Lwin, assistant township head of Kyaikmayaw Township Immigration and Population.

Of the five charged for breaking immigration law, four are from China and one is from Thailand. They include Mr. Sun Zhenbin, who is in charge of Citic Company, Mr. Yu Jun Young of YNJG, Mr. Zhi Xu, of ACK company, Ms. Chen Cuiping of Huaxin Company and Mr. Thawan Mopongpeng of MCL’s human resource supervising manager.

Currently, MCL has a total of 322 foreign employees; comprised of 213 from China, 107 from Thailand, and 2 from Cambodia.