The sickening case of 54 Burmese migrant workers suffocating to death in the back of a truck has caught the attention of the world’s media. Almost every major media outlet has recognized the tragedy.

The truck was transporting 121 Burmese workers on their way from Ranong to Phuket. There are several groups who should be held accountable for such a waste of human life.

The driver, Suchon Boonplong, 38, by his own admission, failed to acknowledge phone calls to his cellphone from one of his employer’s and from the workers actually in the truck, as well as the migrants’ repeated banging on the walls. After stopping the truck and discovering a number of dead bodies, he fled the scene, only to give himself up on Tuesday.

Suchon must be held accountable.

The truck belongs to Damrong Phussadee of Rungruengsup Limited Partnership, who is now in police custody. Suchon claimed that it was Damrong who gave the order and arranged the collection of the migrants, although Damrong has denied all knowledge of the workers being transported.

Damrong must be held accountable.

Suchon collected the workers from Choke Charoen fishing pier, which is owned by Jirawat Sophapanworagul, who has also been arrested. His wife was charged with human trafficking in 1996. A man and a woman, who may or may not have been Jirawat and his wife, met Suchon at the pier.

Those two must be held accountable.

But let’s not forget where these workers, including an eight-year-old girl, now deceased, were going. They were travelling to Phuket, where many of them were to work on construction projects. The increasing demand for low-wage workers and the flawed system in place to control the influx of those workers is what caused the deaths of those 54.

There are illegal Burmese labourers all over Phuket. They come, work about three months and then are deported. The cycle continues because developers need construction workers. Of the 1.5 million Burmese workers in Thailand, one-third have work permits. The workers in this case paid something like $160 to be transported into the country, to receive a wage of about $2 a day. (guardian.co.uk).

The problem is that the construction industry is heavily reliant on these workers and yet they still have to be smuggled into the country 100-plus at a time in sealed containers about one-quarter the size of my bedroom.

The Burmese need jobs and Thailand appears to need the Burmese to do these jobs. It’s difficult to envision a solution to this. Big businesses (both foreign and Thai) rely on those workers. Money talks in this country. Suchon was allegedly paid 80,000 baht to transport the Burmese workers. That’s a huge amount of money. There are people in high-up places who do not want trafficking to stop.

With the international spotlight on this case, there will be a number of arrests made in the coming weeks. Some people will take the fall for this, but it will not be an end to the problem; much less, it will be a media circus to turn away the eyes of the global media.

Think about it. If there are no Burmese in Thailand, then a lot of people will lose a lot of money. Look at all the Burmese touts in Patong. They’re controlled by the police. Sure, there is a high-profile roundup of illegal immigrants going on right now in Phuket, but it started on the same day as the 54 were discovered.

So who should really be held accountable?