PHUKET: A senior officer of the Thai Army's powerful Internal Security Operations Command last week called together 42 key locals suspected of heading human trafficking networks along the Andaman coast and ordered them to stop.

Colonel Kengkai Srirak, Isoc's Region 4 Chief of Staff, also visited the mansion of a woman living in the Thai-Burma port of Ranong. The woman, who runs a fleet of pickup trucks, is believed to be the region's biggest trafficker.

She is bed-ridden and dying from cancer. Late last year, in a meeting tinged with irony, a female passenger from a Rohingya boat was escorted by underlings to their boss's bedside.

The Rohingya woman, reputedly having the power to heal through herbs and faith, was transported from a jungle camp in southern Thailand in the hope she could save the leading trafficker's life.

The healer was later apprehended by local authorities in the south and held briefly because she could identify the trafficker. But in line with policy and the difficulty of proving human trafficking exists in Thailand, the case was never pursued.

In his conversation with Phuketwan yesterday, Colonel Kengkai acknowledged that a change in approach was needed to halt the trafficking trade that was damaging Thailand's reputation internationally.

''Last year we apprehended 18 Thai fishing vessels that had been modified to carry people,'' he said. ''The difficulty is that we know their purpose but we have no evidence to associate them with human trafficking.''

The trafficking trail from Burma and Bangladesh has grown over the past few years into a ''superhighway'' through lack of prosecutions.

Touts in Bangladesh are now talking young men who had no intention of leaving home into becoming passengers to a better future in Malaysia.

Once on the boats, the Bangladeshis and their Rohingya travelling companions quickly realise they are in the hands of brutal people who resort to beatings, rape and sometimes, survivors allege, murders at sea or in Thailand's secret jungle camps.

''We know that some people want to leave their countries,'' Colonel Kengkai said. ''The difficulty is in keeping them safe until they get where they want to go.''

Since 2009 when the inhumane ''pushbacks'' of boatpeople from Thailand were first exposed, the ''help on'' policy has allowed the Royal Thai Navy to provide food and water and other assistance to refugee boatloads - on condition that they do not land in Thailand.

But the lack of intervention and prosecutions has allowed the trafficking industry to flourish, with ageing fishing boats being replaced by large purpose-modified vessels that pick up fresh passengers as they go.

''Some villages along the Andaman coast [which includes the tourist havens of Phuket, Phang Nga and Krabi] have encouraged every family to become involved in smuggling in one way or another,'' the colonel said.

''We have to let them know that what they are doing is damaging the country, and that the short-term profit for themselves is harming Thailand's reputation.''

Late last year a people's uprising against trafficking, led by Manit Pleantong, the chief of the Takuapa district north of Phuket, inspired more Andaman coast officials to take a stand against trafficking and the lax policing that allows the smugglers free passage.

With officials deciding that virtually all boatpeople arriving on Thailand's coast are not human trafficking victims but illegal immigrants, the illicit industry, making fortunes for many, has been allowed to flourish.

''We have to give people the knowledge that smuggling is the wrong thing to do,'' Colonel Kengkai said.

The colonel said he oversaw 254 kilometres of Thailand's coastal waters.

''Some media reports suggest that the number of people departing by boat has increased a lot but if that's the case, not so many are passing along Thailand's coast where we patrol.

''We have to let the media know what we are doing, for the good of the country.''

Thailand was relegated to Tier 3, lowest level on the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons report, in mid-2014. Signs that serious action is being taken could lead to Thailand recovering in as little as three years.