PUBLISHED : 17 Aug 2023 at 04:00
Thai Labour Solidarity Committee (TLSC) has called on the caretaker government to consider revising a new regulation imposing income limits on the elderly receiving monthly allowances.
Signed by Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda, published in the Royal Gazette last Friday and made effective on Saturday, the regulation stipulates that only elderly people with no income or insufficient income to cover living costs are entitled to the monthly allowance from the state.
However, a provisional clause in the regulation says the new criteria for payment of the elderly allowance does not apply to people who registered for the allowance with local administrative bodies before Aug 12, 2023, meaning those currently receiving the allowance are not affected.
The regulation has sparked criticism that it has downgraded the country’s bid to build a universal welfare system for the elderly.
Upon submitting a petition to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha through the government’s public complaint centre, the TLSC said it encouraged the government to back down on the change.
“The regulation will ruin the existing principle of universal state welfare and instead bring back the same old state welfare system, which focused on only the poor and the underprivileged,” said TLSC chairman Sawit Kaewvarn.
The regulation has downgraded Thailand’s elderly welfare system to the state it was in 2009, during which poverty needed to be proved before elderly people were given allowances, he said.
He said this change is unconstitutional, against the international principle of human rights and will generate more problems.
He said the regulation would make work more complicated for state agencies responsible for implementing it.
If they instead followed the existing universal welfare system for the elderly, he said, it would be more convenient not only for the elderly but also for those state agencies handling the monthly allowance payment.
Of the 12 million or so elderly people in the country, the vast majority are aged 60 to 69, he said.