Compensating those affected by the demonstration

A short while ago, various private sector groups came forward to predict the sum of damages inflicted economically by the Ratchaprasong seizure of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), which from April 3rd until now has accrued to 5,244 million baht per month or 174 million baht per day. Besides the closure of hotels, large-scale malls, and smaller stores, many workers went unemployed as day wore onto day.

Seeing the problem and the hardships of those affected, the government tried to solve the problem by compensatory measures. However, following a May 4th cabinet meeting, the prime minister still hadn’t accepted a measure for personally compensating 3,000 baht per each of 20,000 employees whose monthly salaries were less than 15,000 a baht, considering this compensation still insufficient to solve the problem effectively. Thus, a new assistance framework for relief provision must be reconsidered by the Ministry of Labour as well as the working group behind it.

If we consider every aspect of compensatory provision for affected people from the perspective of past problems, not only in terms of governmental projects, but also from the free trade domain and the natural disaster area, then some problems become apparent, as has occurred on each past occasion also, such as:

Lack of transparency
The government and private sector frequently emerge to disclose damage data and compensation measures. However, no matter what the hypothesis; the references or logic behind the numerical data is seldom seen. Maybe this is for reason of the numerical data not being based precisely on scientific methodology or else being distinct in its way of discovery but not revealing a great deal in terms of substance. On the other hand, this preceding scenario does not let every stakeholder check to see if the data is correct. Moreover, no civic organization exists to raise the alarm on any issue, as much as should happen.

Lateness

Reasons for the late response to assist affected people are such as the failure of state agency negotiation, waiting for committee checks, late budget approval, the problem of data lacking on affected people, such as knowing which group of people is affected, how many affected people there are, and how much they are affected. Even standard procedures can be lacking by which to assist people, thus making the assistance late.

But these problems should be corrected. The public sector should more strongly emphasize compensation because taking care of affected people is a government duty. Moreover, it is of concern to all people in the country since the government must take tax money to compensate the affected people.

I would like to suggest that the public sector establish an agency to take care of the accountability needed by allocating the budget in order to aid affected people quickly, not having to wait for steps which might come late. This agency would coordinate with other agencies concerned with the checking of data of affected persons in order to calculate and compensate the right people and groups appropriately in order to consider whether those affected are demanding too much compensation or not. Further, this agency must still have a distinct plan to proceed transparently and fast. A timeframe must also be clearly fixed, for example, within a seven day period following cabinet approval. Moreover, the agency must present a regular report giving clarity to the parliament, for example on payments made to the affected people.

Establishing an agency to help the public sector give easy checks on this work would mean that rechecking from many public agency sources could be avoided. More importantly, those affected would know which agency they could call on and also how to call on that agency.

For the government, the best way is problem prevention, but, in fact, while we can never prevent all problems from occurring, taking care of people during a problem period is also important.

Dr Kriengsak Chareonwongsak
Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School , Harvard University
kriengsak@kriengsak.com, kriengsak.com, drdancando.com