Thailand's social security net to cover 10m people
Thailand's social security net to cover 10m people
BANGKOK (DPA): Thailand's social security scheme will cover about 10 million workers, or almost 30 percent of the workforce, by early next year, Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai said on Monday.
"Our social security program is being extended down to cover small enterprises with just one employee, not the minimum of ten as is now the case," Chuan told the 12th Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific of the International Social Security Association, being hosted by Bangkok on Monday through Thursday.
Thailand's current Social Security Fund, which is mandatory for all firms employing ten people or more, covers 104,956 companies and 5.9 million workers, of about 17 percent of the country's total workforce of 33 million people.
The scheme will be extended to cover enterprises employing one to nine people as of April, 2001.
"This is expected to increase the number of insured workers from the current 5.9 million up to around 10 million," said Chuan, addressing about 250 executives and delegations from 31 countries who have gathered in Bangkok to attend the conference on social security issues in the Asia-Pacific.
Thailand also plans to extend it social security net to cover workers in the agriculture, timber and fisheries sectors by the year 2007 and is looking into the possibility of introducing an unemployment security scheme for the kingdom, said the Thai prime minister.
Thailand was hard hit by the so-called Asian economic crisis that began in 1997, sending the region into recession and putting millions of people, especially the poorest laborers, out of work.
The crisis has highlighted the need for better "security nets" such as social security programs and unemployment schemes in the Asia-Pacific region, which has traditionally shied away from providing public funding for such systems on the argument that governments should concentrate on assuring full employment for their populations instead of handouts.
"Asia's financial turmoil has created dramatic changes in the circumstances as well as the perspectives of many," said Elawat Chandraprasert, permanent secretary of Thailand's Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, in his opening address to the conference.