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Researchers claim government's soci



Subject: Researchers claim government's social safety-net policy is

inefficient 
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		Politics 

Researchers claim government's social safety-net policy is inefficient


THE government's policy of providing a social safety net has been
inefficient and the problems have spread to local communities nationwide,
according to researchers of the Social Research Institute at Chulalongkorn
University. 

At a seminar on the social impact of the economic crisis, the researchers
said their field study, completed early this month, of 5,000 families in
urban and rural communities had found that more than 90 per cent of them
suffered from the economic crisis due to the higher cost of living and
lower income. 

Only 7 per cent of surveyed families were happier because their family
members had come home to live together and had cut down on entertainment
outside their homes because of falling income. 

Associate Prof Amara Pongsaphict, director of the institute, said that
though the impacts of the economic crisis had already been felt in local
communities for a year, the social safety-net programmes had barely reached
the communities and loans from the Social Investment Programme of the World
Bank and the Government Savings Bank had been virtually inaccessible, so
that local people had to try individually to survive by themselves without
any help from the government. 

As for the self-sufficient farming policy promoted by the government, Amara
said her research had discovered that rural people still needed help from
the government to get farmland and dig ponds. 

Anan Karnchanaphan, professor of Social Science at Chiang Mai University,
said local people could not follow the ivory-tower ideal of self-sufficient
farming because the structure of rural Thailand had totally changed. Many
farmers lost their land during the economic boom and rely on working in the
industrial sector. 

''The government expresses the romantic view that self-sufficient farming
will be a backbone to support unemployed people driven back home, but a
survey throughout the rural areas of Chiang Mai province has found that
farmers have an average of two rai per family while the new farming concept
requires at least ten rai,'' he said. 

Researchers interviewed 5,000 families in urban and rural communities from
five provinces -- Bangkok, Chiang Rai, Sa Kaeo, Ubon Ratchathani and Yala
-- over four months. 

Researchers were told drug addiction in the communities had increased by
about 30 per cent while robbery and gambling had gone up by 20 per cent
since the economic crisis started. In Sa Kaeo province one-third of the
children were being forced to work in other areas. 

Moreover, the majority of local people were resorting to self-medication
instead of going to doctors. 
Nittaya Kochaphadi, and associate professor at Mahidol University, said
that of the 3,306 rural children surveyed 30 per cent faced a higher risk
of malnutrition. 

All the commentators said that a single central policy on the social safety
net would not work and that the government needed to diversify its policies
to address different problems. 


BY SURACHAI CHUPAKA 
The Nation