Farmers Get All Their Money from Thai Coffee Brand – Three Years Late…

Doi Chaang Coffee, a top Thai coffee brand is promising to repay around 200 farmers who wound up in immense debt after waiting nearly three years for payment.

According to the Thomson Reuters foundation, who spoke with 20 farmers across northern Chiang Rai, farmers were owed from 63 to 7,290 dollars since 2017. Labor experts expressed that these kinds of debts put many at risk of debt bondage – a common type of modern slavery where people are stuck with unfair working environments to pay off debts.

“By June we should be able to pay back all of the money that we owe to the coffee growers,” says Panachai Pisailert, managing director of Doi Chaang Coffee Original Co. “The past two to three years the economy has been bad, and that has affected Doi Chaang’s coffee sales.”

In response to the Thomson Reuters Foundation revealing the lack of payments and the debts they caused, the company –with over 50 franchises in Southeast Asia – has vowed to pay 224,000 dollars to help farmers get back on track.