Three Thai women have been rescued after being lured into a human-egg harvesting scheme operated by Chinese gangsters in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. 

The effort to free them was prompted by Pavena Hongsakula, founder of the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women.

Ms Pavena said she learned about it from another woman victim who had been released and returned to Thailand in September only after paying the gang about 70,000 baht.

The victim told Ms Pavena other Thais were still trapped at the human-egg farm because they had no money to pay for their freedom. 

Foreign Affairs police were able to help three other women return to Thailand on Jan 30, she said.

Speaking on Facebook on Monday, one of the victims said she saw a job advertisement on Facebook promising an income of 400,000 to 600,000 baht.

She contacted the page and was told the job was being a surrogate mother for couples who could not have children in Georgia, and that it was legal there. The employer had paid for her passport application and other travel expenses, the woman said.

She and about 10 others travelled to Georgia in August, led by a Thai woman who was believed to work for the gang. On arrival, they were taken to an area where there were four large houses and at least 100 Thai women already living there.

The place was run by Chinese gangsters and it turned out that no couples applied there for a surrogate mother, she said. 

Instead, they were given hormones to stimulate their ovaries. Once a month the women were given an anaesthetic and their eggs collected, she said. Some of the women had not been paid at all. 

The collected eggs were believed to be sold, trafficked in other countries for use in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), Ms Pavena said.