Government coupons for
the poor scheme:
Will the poor even get the coupons?
By Jon Fernquest
A government coupons for the poor scheme has been
planned to provide an extra 300-400 per month to poor people to help
them survive.
Just like the farmers who never profited from high rice prices, these coupons may never reach many of the poor.
Recent inflation has hit the poor the hardest. The poor spend a much higher percentage of their income on food than other people. Recently, the price of rice skyrocketed from 17 to 35 baht per kilogramme and the price of sugar increasd by five baht per kilogramme. Some people want price caps but others realise this might create artificial shortages.
Clever people can easily find their way around government attempts to control market prices. (See previous article). At the same time, government plans to purchase new buses and charge higher fares promises to make the lives of poor people even more difficult.
The new government coupon programme will have to be carefully monitored and controlled since it is easy for dishonest people to abuse these programmes. In the recent Blue Flag rice programme cheap bags of rice for the poor were actually purchased by middlemen hired to wait in line and buy the rice at the cheap prices so that it could be resold at a higher price somewhere else. In the end, nothing was really left for the poor and the programme was cancelled.
People who earn below 1,380 baht per month are considered to be poor (below the poverty line). By this definition, in Thailand there are approximately 6.06 million people in 1.66 million households who are poor.
There will almost surely be problems in identifying and counting the poor. According to a nationwide registry of the poor made in 2004, there are 8 million poor people with 568,541 of them in Bangkok. This list was made by asking people: "Are you poor?" with no check afterwards. Some people are obviously going to say "Yes, I'm poor" when they're not, just to get the benefits.
The problem is, Thailand does not keep detailed records and statistics that cover the economic life of poor people unlike the governments of Europe, Japan, and the social security system of the United States. The only reliable statistics on income in Thailand are tax records and this only includes 6-7 million out of the 65 million people in Thailand.
Even if the distribution of coupons to poor people is closely monitored and checked, some people will invent new ways to profit dishonestly from them ("new corruption techniques"). Political canvassers may even find new creative ways to buy votes with these new coupons. As Suranand Vejjajiva suggests in his Bangkok Post column:
Fake payrolls would be a walk in the park. In many communities, during elections identity cards were bought and collected to control votes. How about rounding them up at a discount to redeem the goods at full price? What are the measures to prevent abuses in favour of one's friends and relatives and discrimination against opposition party members? A lot of unanswered questions linger. It would take a grand and cautious design with a large operation to match to make all this work and fail-safe. (Source)
There will be a list of products that the poor can purchase with their coupons. This list will have certain lucky companies chosen by the government. Yet another opportunity for corruption.
Assuming that the poor actually do receive these the coupons, these handouts may create a dangerous dependency. Many people will start to rely on these handouts and it may not be possible to end them in the future as planned. Helping people to help themselves and generate their own income by using job creation and training programmes would be better for the long-run.
Vocabulary:
hit the poor the
hardest -
the poor are harmed the most คนจนได้รับผลกระทบมากที่สุด
skyrocketed - increased suddenly by a
very large amount ที่สูงขึ้นมาก
price caps - limits to prices (prices
cannot move beyond this level) การยันราคา
artificial - not natural, made by humans
จำลอง ที่มนุษย์สร้างขึ้น
shortages - when there are not enough
goods for people to buy การขาดแคลน
clever - very smart (too smart) ฉลาด
(แกมโกง)
find their way around - know how something works or
how it is organised so that you can use it หาทางเอาเปรียบ หาช่องว่าง
monitored - watch carefully what is
happening, to make sure everything goes well เฝ้าระวัง
dishonest people - not truthful, not honest,
cannot be trusted คนขี้โกง คนที่เชื่อไม่ได้
middlemen - people between the factory
and producer and the consumer or customer พ่อค้าคนกลาง
identifying - can name the person, know
who the person is ระบุชื่อ
nationwide - including the whole country
ทั่วประเทศ
registry - a list of names kept for
some purpose รายชื่อที่ลงทะเบียน
benefits - goods things that can
happen from anm activity ผลประโยชน์
records - pieces of information
describing something written down or stored on a computer บันทึุก
statistics - facts about something,
described by counting them สถิติ
social security - a government programme that
pays money regularly to certain people such as those without a job, the
sick, and old people โครงการประกันสังคม
reliable - correct or works correctly,
works the way you expect, does not fail ที่น่าเชื่อถือ
distribution - giving or delivering things
to many people การจำหน่ายออกไป
techniques - methods of doing a task or
activity เทคนิค
political canvassers - workers who get people to
vote for a politician หัวคะแนน
fake - not the real thing (made to
look like the real thing in order to deceive people) ปลอม
payrolls - the list of people who are
paid for working at a company พนักงานที่ได้รับเงินเดือน
a walk in the park - very easy to do
ทำได้อย่างง่ายดาย
rounding them up - gathering, collecting
together รวบรวม
a discount - reducing the price of good
sold การลดราคา
redeem the goods - exchange something like
money or a coupon for something แลกสินค้าด้วยคูปองหรือแต้มสะสม
discrimination against - treating one group of
people worse than the others การดูหมิ่น การกีดกัน
fail-safe - cannot fail, cannot go
wrong ไม่สามารถจะปล่อยให้ผิดพลาดได้
handouts - things given to people for
free สิ่งที่หยิบยื่นให้ฟรี
a dependency - a need for something, that
is not good to have (for example, a person with an alcohol dependency
must drink alcohol all the time) สิ่งที่ติด / พึ่ง / อาศัย
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