Pita digs in on pay hike vow
Pledge of B450 per time sparks a contentious conversation
Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of the Move Forward Party( MFP ), vowed that if his party forms the new government, he will push for a proposed increase in the minimum wage to 450 baht per day.
Mr. Pita, the MFP candidate for prime minister, stated that he had discussed the proposed salary increase with the personal business on a YouTube channel hosted by media anchor Sorayuth Suthassanachinda.
There is a lot of discussion about the MFP’s vote commitment to quickly raise the regular minimum income to 450 baht and change it periodically to keep up with inflation. Although it may be honorable to support unemployed workers, observers say it is crucial to recognize the hike’s possible effects on businesses and the general economy.
” The private business may be coerced into raising wages by the state.” According to the law, the issue needs to be discussed by the bilateral committee.
The pay is still less than 10,000 baht if an worker works 20 days a month, despite the fact that the cost of living is extremely large today, according to Mr. Pita.
Before making an announcement, the trilateral regional pay committee, which consists of the government, employers, and labor unions, must finalize the specifics of any proposed income increase and present them to the cabinet.
Given the broad effects on stakeholders, this strategy will guarantee transparency and accountability in the decision-making process.
Mr. Pita stated that he will still need to meet with businesses to discuss the proposed salary increase in more detail. However, if the MFP takes over as the government, steps would also be taken to lessen the effect of the increase on companies, such as lowering taxes for small and medium-sized businesses and granting employers a six-month discharge of contributions to the Social Security Fund.
” We did take care of Businesses affected by the pay increase with relief packages designed to help them ,” Mr. Pita declared.
Mr. Pita stated that the government may send representatives to the bilateral committee to discuss the plan to improve the daily income to 450 baht within 100 days of taking power and to present measures to assist affected employers.
While he will press for the salary increase, Mr. Pita continued by saying that another policies, such as lowering electricity rates and oil prices, increasing business liquidity, raising state revenue, and promoting exports, will also be pursued.
Additionally, he made an effort to ease worries that the proposed wage increase may force major corporations to relocate their production facilities in Thailand to different nations.
I spoke with significant corporations, and they predicted that this would be a chance to move from labor to new innovations. whether there will be fewer personnel employed… I believe that a greater number of high-quality work will still be available for jobs.
We cannot afford to allow small compensation to restrict the nation’s ability to compete. We will figure out how to assist by cutting additional expenses for providers.
We’ll go over why raising income is required and why employees deserve it. We are prepared to assist large operators in any way that the[ incoming ] government requests, according to Mr. Pita.
Santitarn Sathirathai, the party chief economist of the Singapore-based technical conglomerate Sea Group, expressed his support for any initiatives to combat economic inequality in Thailand in a post on Facebook on Friday.
Every coverage, he said, has advantages and disadvantages, even though the minimum wage may be raised.
In this situation, a proposed wage increase without addressing the issue of efficiency will be detrimental because businesses will have to deal with rising costs and may need to relocate their production facilities abroad or exchange workers with machinery or technologies, according to him.
At least 50 dead, 300 injured in train collision in eastern India: Reports
A passenger train derailed and collided with a goods train on Friday( Jun 2 ) in Odisha’s Balasore district, causing at least 50 fatalities and 300 hospitalizations in India, according to media reports. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in a tweet on Friday that recovery operations were ongoing atContinue Reading
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BHUBANESWAR: According to federal authorities in the northeast Indian state of Odisha, two passenger trains collided on Friday, June 2, causing the deadliest road accident in India in more than a decade. At least 207 people were killed and 900 were injured. According to state Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena inContinue Reading
Cristiano Ronaldo visits Singapore, surrounded by fans at Botanic Gardens
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner is in Singapore to support a series of youth scholarships established by his long-time friend and philanthropist Peter Lim. These include the NParks-Peter Lim Scholarship, which is meant to help less privileged youths pursue their interests, develop their skills and build capability in the landscaping, horticulture,Continue Reading
Sick elephant in Sri Lanka heading home
Two experienced mahouts heading to Sri Lanka to help prepare Sak Surin for journey
Sak Surin, an ailing male Thai elephant, will be flown home from Sri Lanka for treatment and rehabilitation next month, the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) said on Friday.
Attapol Charoenchansa, the department’s acting director-general, said the timeline was based on the latest estimates made by a veterinarian team dispatched to Sri Lanka to assess the animal’s health and readiness to travel.
An Ilyushin IL-76 transport aircraft will be sent to Sri Lanka to bring the elephant back.
Once in Thailand, the elephant will be cared for at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, Mr Attapol said.
Originally gifted with two other Thai elephants to Sri Lanka in 2001 as a goodwill ambassador, Sak Surin, also known in Sri Lanka as Muthu Raja, had been mistreated for years, according to a complaint made by Rally for Animal Rights & Environment (Rare).
The elephant had been overworked and was not properly cared for, and subsequently became very thin and sick, said the Sri Lanka-based animal rights group.
The elephant has also sustained some serious injuries, which made it unable to bend its left forelimb for eight years, Rare said.
The group said the Sri Lankan government had transferred ownership of Sak Surin to the Kande Vihara Temple, where it was a carrier of holy relics during annual Buddhist parades.
“Two highly experienced mahouts have been selected and assigned to travel along with a new DNP team to Sri Lanka on Tuesday to help take care of the elephant and prepare it for the journey back home,” said Mr Attapol.
The two mahouts are Thorachaisit Siri, 38, who has been handling elephants with aggressive behaviour for more than a decade, and Supphachai Bunkoet, 26, who has been working with elephants for nine years.
Mr Supphachai also works as a veterinarian assistant at the Lampang elephant hospital.
Chinese tourists nabbed in high-end pub raid
Drugs also found at Huai Khwang nightspot similar to infamous Jinling pub
Almost 50 Chinese tourists were detained for questioning and a large quantity of illicit drugs were seized when police raided a pub in Huai Khwang district of Bangkok early Friday morning.
The raid at 3am found 30 men and 18 women partying in four karaoke rooms, said Pol Maj Gen Thirasak Chantrapipat, chief of the Children and Women Protection Division.
At least four types of drugs — cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy and “happy water”, which is an illicit drug cocktail — were confiscated, along with drug-taking paraphernalia.
Several tourists were charged with drug use after testing positive. Police are currently investigating whether they violated the immigration law, and whether the pub operator supplied the drugs to its customers.
Pol Maj Gen Thirasak said police had been gathering information about the pub for two weeks prior to the raid and found its operation was similar to that of the infamous Jinling pub.
Many Chinese tourists were found inside when police entered the pub in Huai Khwang district early Friday. (Photo supplied/Wassayos Ngamkham)
On Oct 26 last year, police stormed Jinling, which operated illegally in three adjacent buildings on Charoen Rat Road in Yannawa district. A total of 104 customers, 99 of them Chinese nationals, tested positive for drugs.
The Jinling raid touched off an investigation that led to the arrest of Chinese businessman Chaiyanat “Tuhao” Kornchayanant and 40 others on multiple charges related to narcotics, organised transnational crime, money-laundering and more.
It subsequently emerged that dozens of Chinese crime figures were operating in the country, having obtained long-term visas with the help of dozens of corrupt immigration officers. Investigations are continuing.
Pol Maj Gen Atthaporn Wongsiripreeda, commander of Metropolitan Police Division 1, said police are questioning the staff of the pub that was raided on Friday for more information about the venue.
Based on the paperwork, the pub is owned by a Thai national but police will run a thorough check on its ownership and determine if it is linked to Jinling, he said.
Citing a statement from an accountant, he said several staff are ethnic people from Chiang Mai who can speak Chinese. Most of the customers are Chinese tourists who were charged 6,500 to 15,000 baht for karaoke services excluding drinks.
Pol Maj Gen Atthaporn said that a Thai man, who is believed to a security guard, was arrested on a firearms-related charge when police found a gun in his possession. Five vehicles belonging to the customers were confiscated for further examination after police found drugs in some of them.
(Photo supplied/Wassayos Ngamkham)
Drug traffickers smuggling crystal meth past South East Asia security – UN
EPADrug traffickers have found new ways of smuggling crystal methamphetamine, known as ice, out of South East Asia to high-paying customers outside the region, according to a UN report.
Criminal gangs are moving more drugs by sea to evade land patrols in Thailand and China, making them harder to spot.
They have learnt “to anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent” law enforcement, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.
The ice is sold in Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
The huge trade in methamphetamines and other illegal drugs, which mostly flow from super labs in parts of Myanmar, is also showing no signs of slowing down, the UN agency warned.
Shan state in Myanmar is home to what many believe is the world’s largest meth trade. Traffickers ship the drugs out through the borders of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, an area known as the Golden Triangle.
“In 2022, we saw them work around Thai borders more than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, the UN agency’s regional representative.
“Traffickers have continued to ship large volumes through Laos and northern Thailand, but at the same time they have pushed significant supply through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea, where it seems few were looking.”
The meth comes in two main forms: pills known as yaba or highly addictive crystal meth (ice).
In recent years, both Thai and Chinese police, backed by neighbouring forces, have stepped up operations in the Golden Triangle.
Criminal gangs use Thailand as a transit country to get high value crystal meth to a third country such as Australia or New Zealand where the street value of the drug can be 10 times higher than in Bangkok.
High volumes of Myanmar meth is also making its way into Bangladesh and India, according to the report.
In the last year, Thai and Chinese authorities have seen a significant drop in drug seizures.
Police across East Asia and South East Asia seized nearly 151 tonnes of methamphetamines in 2022, down from a record of 172 tonnes in 2021.
However, the price of 1kg (2.2lbs) of crystal meth is at an all-time low, which suggests that supplies are still high.
Officials believe criminal gangs have found ways to “diversify” their network and move the drugs using alternative maritime routes. Thai drug enforcement agents are managing to intercept some of the supplies at sea.
Earlier this week, after a four-month operation following drug smugglers, Thai authorities seized more than 900kg of crystal meth from a trawler in the Gulf of Thailand, about 32km (20 miles) from the tourist island of Samed. Six crew members were arrested in the operation.
Officers said the drugs would have been transferred from the small Thai boat to a bigger trawler which would have likely taken the drugs to Australia.
Authorities across the region also seized a record 27.4 tonnes of ketamine in 2022, which is an anaesthetic misused as a recreational party drug. That’s up 167% on 2021.
The report highlighted one ketamine laboratory in Cambodia which they said was capable of “industrial scale” production.
It also expressed concern that Cambodia had become “a key transit and to some extent production point for the regional drug trade”.
“The discovery of a series of clandestine ketamine laboratories, processing warehouses, and storage facilities across the country has set off alarm bells in the region,” the report said.
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26 August 2022
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Are the rich more intelligent? Hereâs what science says
From White Lotus to Succession, there’s high demand for television dramas about the super rich. The characters on these shows are typically portrayed as entitled, hollow and sad. But they aren’t necessarily depicted as unintelligent. So are rich people rich because they are smart?
In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, this question goes beyond scientific curiosity and touches something deeper.
If people’s net worth were only the consequence of their intelligence, the gigantic wealth gap we see in our society might be perceived as less intolerable – at least by some. Inequality would be the price to pay for having the smartest lead us all to a better future.
There is little doubt that intelligence contributes to one’s economic and professional success. Take self-made billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Ray Dalio, just to name a few. It would be surprising if top innovators in advanced fields such as tech and finance turned out to be average.
In fact, intelligence is the best predictor of both educational achievement and work performance. And academic and professional success is, in turn, a fairly good forecaster of income. But that’s not the whole story.
Not all highly intelligent people are primarily driven by a desire for wealth – they often have a thirst for knowledge. Some may instead opt for comparatively less well-paying jobs that are more intellectually rewarding, such as architecture, engineering or research.
A recent Swedish study showed that cognitive test scores of the top 1% of earners were not significantly different to the scores obtained by those who earned slightly less.
But to what extent does intelligence boost wealth? Before diving into the evidence, we must clarify what researchers mean by “intelligence.” Intelligence can be defined as the ability to perform a wide range of cognitive tests successfully.
And these seem to be linked. If someone is good at resolving a particular cognitive test, they will probably perform well in other cognitive tests too.
Intelligence is not a monolithic trait, though. In fact, it consists of at least two broad constructs: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence taps into core cognitive mechanisms, such as the speed of processing stimuli, memory capacity and abstract reasoning. Conversely, crystallized intelligence refers to those skills developed in a social environment, such as literacy, numeracy and knowledge about specific topics.
This distinction matters because these two types of intelligence develop in different ways. Fluid intelligence can be inherited, cannot be boosted and decreases fairly quickly with age. By contrast, crystallized intelligence increases throughout most adulthood and starts declining only after about 65 years.
But fluid intelligence helps build up crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence represents the brain’s capacity of acquiring and elaborating information. Crystallized intelligence is, to a large extent, acquired information.
This means that if your reasoning skills are sharp, then you will process new information quickly. You will integrate novel information with old information accurately. Ultimately, this will speed up learning of any discipline and contribute to your academic and financial success.
Education is a factor
That said, innate capabilities are not the only thing that matters. Another significant factor is education.
A quantitative review has established that the more years of schooling, the higher students’ intelligence scores. Crucially, these improvements stem from training in specific skills rather than enhancing general intellectual ability. So school teaches you useful stuff for both professional success and performing intelligence tests.
Unsurprisingly, education in turn is affected by family socioeconomic status. For example, expensive schools and private tutors provide the student highly efficient personalized instruction. Access to top quality education may therefore make a huge difference in future income.
Of course, the influence of family socioeconomic status on wealth does not operate solely through education. Inheritance and networks are among the most obvious mechanisms. This is particularly true for entrepreneurs, whose investing potential and connections are fundamental for business success.
The role of luck
So intelligence, education and socioeconomic status all affect one’s income. However, these factors alone are unlikely to fully account for the individual differences in wealth. In fact, a recent study suggests that luck exerts a significant impact.
This study highlights that the statistical distribution of wealth differs from the distribution of intelligence. Intelligence is “normally distributed”, with most individuals being around average. By contrast, wealth follows a “pareto distribution”, a formula which shows that 80% of a country’s wealth is in the hands of only 20% of the population.
Intelligence versus wealth distribution
This means intellect alone cannot account for the disproportionate disparities between rich and poor in our society.
The study does not downplay the role of intelligence (or talent in general). A fine intellectual ability improves the chances of getting rich. Nonetheless, intelligence is no guarantee of getting rich. Furthermore, a series of fortunate events can clearly turn unremarkable individuals into high earners.
That is, when it comes to getting rich, intelligence is neither sufficient nor necessary. But it does help.
“I’d rather be lucky than good,” says the character Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in Woody Allen’s film Match Point. In the light of the evidence we have just reviewed, he may be right.
Being born into a wealthy and highly educated family is a fortunate event. Likewise, random strokes of luck (like winning the lottery) do not come from years of hard work. We may even push the argument a bit further and conclude that being intelligent is a form of luck itself.
Many things that contribute to achieving financial success are beyond our control. Most, if not all, extremely wealthy people have been blessed by Lady Luck somehow.
Conversely, making the most of what luck brings us certainly matters. Granted, a good deal of individuals merely cash in the benefits of inherited privilege.
Regardless, many small and big fortunes stem from an intelligent use of the resources we are lucky to have been gifted with – whether they are intellectual, educational or socioeconomic.
Giovanni Sala is Lecturer in Psychology, University of Liverpool and Fernand Gobet, Professorial Research Fellow of Psychology, London School of Economics and Political Science
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A life for children’s rights
Children make up a third of the world’s population. One might wonder what would happen if they had self-representation in global politics.
“A society that welcomes the voices of children will certainly be a bit noisier. As if adults weren’t noisy enough,” joked child rights advocate Amihan V. Abueva. “But maybe with some louder noise from the younger ones, we could find more sense and better solutions.”
From the Philippines, Abueva has been a pioneer in her field for more than three decades. This week marked International Children’s Rights Day on 1 June, which the Southeast Asia Globe commemorated by walking through her pivotal work across the region and world in an extensive interview.
A key member and former president of the Bangkok-based child protection network ECPAT International, Abueva played a major advocacy role for stopping child prostitution in the global sex tourism of Southeast Asia.
Beyond that, Abueva has long been a vocal proponent of the right of children to participate in society, especially in policy-making about child welfare. She previously served as the Philippines’ government representative to the ASEAN Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) and has worked to encourage input from youths and children.
Abueva was born in the Philippines and raised during the authoritarian regime of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. In those years, she overcame several obstacles to become a rights defender, but the real turning point in her work as a children’s advocate wasn’t until after the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.
Soon after the restoration of democracy, she gave birth to a child.
“Then it was when I became a breastfeeding advocate and got more serious about children’s rights,” Abueva said. “I have never left.”
That was 1988. The next year, the UN adopted the first children’s rights international treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Abueva, who started her activism in the Marcos years, and her team successfully lobbied the Philippine Senate until it signed and ratified the treaty in 1990.
The UNCRC is now the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, adopted by 196 nations, including all Southeast Asia countries.
Although that was a big milestone for the region, Abueva felt it wasn’t enough.
Through the years, while overseeing research on prostitution and tourism, she felt “it was really important to talk to the children themselves about it”.
In 1996, she embarked on a campaign to involve children in the first World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm. The event included representation from 122 governments and civil society organisations from around the world.
“I had a real uphill battle,” she said. “I insisted that children should be participating at the same level as adults, and I won.”
The planning committee accepted her plea and 16 children from the Philippines, Sweden, Brazil and Ghana participated in the congress.
That was just the beginning. From 2000 to 2008, hundreds of children from more than 20 countries were involved in international meetings. As children’s participation grew quickly, ECPAT worked along with other international organisations to facilitate the process and train adult participants to safely and effectively interact with the youths.
“Many people work for children, but they don’t know how to work with children,” she said.
Abueva wants to see even more child participation across all levels of governance, from domestic to international.
“When you help children to grow and develop critical thinking, they can become leaders for themselves,” she said. “It is our responsibility to accompany them. Especially in our society, which is not kind towards those who think critically.”
What does child participation mean in the context of Southeast Asia?
A concept we are seeing emerging now is children as human rights defenders. But, of course, it’s difficult in a region where even adult human rights defenders are at risk.
By using the term “human rights defenders”, children could find protection in already-existing international legislative standards. But the problem is how the state allows those rights. We have to help children to value peace and solidarity and so to help each other rather than become military-led.
Recognition of the children’s right to participate in Southeast Asia has been progressing at different levels. Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, are more involved in child participation across the region, while others, such as Laos and Vietnam, are still trying to catch up. In Myanmar, we also have a big problem now. The military junta really endangers lots of children. We are still working with some groups there, but they have to be really careful. We are still trying to find safe ways for them to participate, for instance, through consultations with the UN.
Civil society organisations, government agencies and inter-governmental bodies have strengthened collaborative work to create safe spaces for children to express their views on matters affecting their lives. But aside from the various efforts of creating safe spaces for children, child participation is not just children receiving kits or food during an activity, it is not just children watching magic shows, or having activities to commemorate children’s month.
Meaningful child participation brings in children even at the planning stage, where children can raise what they think is the best way for them to celebrate the children’s month, what programs, projects or activities are appropriate or are needed by them and their peers, and how the activities should be implemented that will ensure child-friendly approaches and tools. Another important aspect of meaningful child participation is getting the children’s feedback on the activities and how they can be further improved in the future.
Allowing children to speak and make decisions, even as simple as letting them decide the colour of shirt to wear, helps them develop important life skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, and communicating.
What programs and activities are available for children to participate in key decisions at a community or national level?
At the national level, civil society groups are advocating for more meaningful child participation in existing or current mechanisms.
For example, in the Philippines, the local government units are mandated to create a Local Council for the Protection of Children at the village, city or municipality and province levels. Children representatives are among the members of the council. Consultations with children are being conducted at the village level. The team is also in charge of promoting and ensuring a safe environment for children and overseeing the government’s action on the topic.
Across the region, efforts to organise children and youth groups are also multiplying because we have to remember that children are not just passive recipients of services, victims, or survivors, but they are also active agents of change.
In issues like climate change, children are already taking action in simple ways that are also relevant in their own community. In the UNCRC monitoring and reporting, children are actively participating in preparing the reports submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
At the regional level, there is the ASEAN Children’s Forum (ACF), which is conducted every two years. During this regional meeting, children talk about issues that affect their lives and their peers. We also conduct a regional childrens’ meeting annually. We gather children from the communities where our member organisations work. In addition, we conduct consultations with children for our strategic plan.
In 2019, we organised the Asian Children’s Summit for the first time. It was a way to try to bridge the whole of Asia. So we had children from East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The kids discussed four main themes, namely the right to help the environment, digital safety, children and the in the context of migration and violence against children and we asked them to develop what they wanted to say about this.
That event especially demonstrated that children have so many ideas and that we need everybody to be working together.
We value children’s voices in our work and we learn a lot from them and because of this, we are able to do our work better.
What are some of the main challenges in this field?
First, the participation rights of children need to be fully understood by all stakeholders. It is not just simply listening to children when they talk. Article 12 of the UNCRC talks about “giving due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of children”. It is active listening for adults and taking action based on the views of children. At the same time, adults have the responsibility to explain to children why some of their views could not be considered.
Meaningful child participation can be consultative, collaborative or child-led. These three approaches are equally important.
Another problematic thing in Asia is that there is the process behind the [ASEAN Children’s Forum], which is organised by the ministers for social welfare and development and regional working groups. The ones who really get the work done here are senior officials in the end, which is not really the point of a children’s forum, is it?
We [children’s rights practitioners] don’t know who actually listens to what the children said and what they do with the children’s opinions afterwards. There’s been an attempt to revise the terms of reference, but I’m not sure whether that’s already been changed or not.
Another major issue now is that children are the first ones to lose their voice when civic space shrinks and states impose stronger restrictions. That is what’s happening in Myanmar. But in the Philippines, things are also not going too well for children.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, two teenage girls broke the curfew rules and two policemen caught them and took them to the beach. They sexually molested one and raped the other. Following the event, one of the girls went to report the case to the police in a neighbouring town but in addition to being denied police protection, on the way home she was ambushed and shot dead.
Our work is to explain to the kids that when you are abused go to the police and report the violence. But cases like this really break everybody’s trust. If even the authorities don’t respect children, we are in big trouble.
Our role as child rights defenders is to ensure that the children’s voices are heard as loudly as possible.
What are your hopes for the future of children’s rights in Southeast Asia?
One day, a girl from Pakistan and her Indian friend came to me and said: “Grandma Ami, when you talk about our right to a healthy environment, don’t think only in terms of physical health, you have to also talk about mental health.”
And I was really taken aback because it was 2019. At that time, there wasn’t that much being said about the mental health of children. This was pre-pandemic. I really thought they had a point. Mental health was and is a big problem and I realised that thanks to two children speaking up to me.
This is exactly what I hope for the future; that adults value children’s opinions. When we embrace their participation, we need to value them for what they are now and for what they will be in the future.
Children’s rights are everybody’s business.