Year: 2020
Nightmares loom if savings dry up
Jiraporn Plangpraphan As the coronavirus pandemic drags on and mass layoffs intensify, the importance of having financial savings has never been greater. What to do when only one-quarter of the Thai population can live on their savings for just three months? What will happen when their savings run out and the government can no longer […]
Big data to keep Thai workers afloat
Winit Theanvanichpant Since the coronavirus pandemic hit Thailand early this year, businesses have been falling like dominoes. Millions of people have lost their jobs in the country’s worst economic downturn in recent memory. Yet some jobs have survived the pandemic better than others. Which are they? Why are they resilient to the crisis? What jobs […]
Time to give child protection a boost
Boonwara SumanoNatinee Na Chiangmai In the first half of this year, there were numerous reports of violence against children. Many of these cases share a similar pattern — those responsible for the violence are people close to the child. According to statistics from the 1300 hotline, from October 2018 to September 2019, reports of violence against […]
Win-win solution for forests, people
Kannika ThampanishvongNatthaporn Butpho One of the reasons is the lack of understanding of how sustainable agriculture benefits farmers’ livelihoods, the environment and public health.? Meanwhile, decades of intensive chemical farming have produced ample evidence of how harmful it is to the environment and public well-being. Apart from severely affecting farmers’ health, toxic from chemicals lead to […]
Why seat belt law fails to bring safety
Napaphat Sirikasemchai Kill This Love , the hit music video by the South Korean girl band BLACKPINK took the world by storm last year, yet it was banned from airing on South Korean television because some of the video images break the country’s seat belt law. For KBS, South Korea’s national broadcasting system, it does not […]
‘New normal’ of eating must be practical
Urairat Jantarasiri Eating out with friends and families, once a happy occasion, has now become like an adventure as the joy is laced by constant health safety concerns, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic that refuses to go away. What we need is not only a set of new rules to ensure that the restaurants and […]
Criminal law misused in public policies
Siranan Dechakupt If Thailand wants to preserve its fastdwindling forests, it pays to ponder if it’s insane to repeat the same policy that has failed for decades, yet still expect it to succeed. The forest laws, for example. The draconian forest law and regulations are based on the fierce belief that humans and natural forests […]
Face mask crisis of another design
Kannika ThampanishvongWichsinee Wibulpolprasert Medical face masks keep us safe from the new coronavirus. Discarding of soiled masks improperly, however, not only harms the environment, but also people. Our carelessness can come back to harm us with a vengeance. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, medical face masks were used primarily by public health personnel. Now, the public […]
Save informal workers, save economy
Boondhariga ChonpitakwongWorawan Chandoevwit Unstable income and health risks are no strangers to highway stall vendors, but this year’s pandemic underscores the policy urgency to provide them and other 38 million informal workers with better life and work security. Highway stall vendors always look forward to long holidays, because they bring more tourists on the roads […]
How to protect over 2 million migrant workers in Thailand from Covid-19
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yongyuth Chalamwong As Covid-19 continues to spread around the world, Thai people who work abroad in 119 countries have been affected by prevention measures, such as country lockdown, border closure, international flight restriction, ban on social grouping, obligatory face mask wearing, and social distancing, that have been enforced in almost every country. […]
Covid-19 emphasizes the need to bridge the digital divide and reduce online educational inequality
Dr. Saowaruj Rattanakhamfu Amid the Covid-19 global outbreak, governments around the world, including Thailand, have put in place “semi-lockdown” and social distancing measures to stop the spread of the virus. This leads to the closing of public places, including universities, to prevent social gathering. Universities have, consequently, turned to online teaching so that students can […]