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.