Cabinet extends measure to cover those laid off last month

The Cabinet yesterday approved a number of measures to ease the financial burden of individuals, including the extension of unemployment benefits from six to eight months to cover those laid off between last month and next December.

The Labour Ministry earlier planned to extend benefits only for those laid off this year, but according to deputy PM's Office spokesman Puttipong Punnakan, the 51,000 workers who lost their jobs in December was too large a number to ignore.

The Cabinet also endorsed a Bt120-million budget to fund training programmes for the unemployed as well as an additional Bt1.955 billion for the universal health scheme, because the number of registered beneficiaries at 990,000 was much higher than expected.

As a means of boosting spending, the Cabinet also approved the Bt2,000 payment to staff members of local administrative bodies and state enterprises whose monthly income is below Bt15,000. At least 38,000 are expected to be eligible, which would entail a total payment of Bt76 million.

This is an extension of the Cabinet's initial resolution to grant Bt2,000 to civil servants and members of the Social Security Fund who make less than Bt15,000 a month.

This payment is part of the Bt116-billion economic-stimulus package.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet has also allocated Bt607 million for the Farmer Rehabilitation Development Fund to buy out the debts of 1,187 farmers.

Some 478 farmers owe a total of Bt258 million to Krung Thai Bank alone.

Sangsit Piriyarangsan, acting secretary-general of the fund, said most of the debts were owned by financial institutions that had purchased the loans from the Legal Execution Department.

He said the office would buy these debts from financial institutions at the price they had paid.

Negotiations with creditors will start on February 3.

On February 10, the office will also seek Cabinet approval for a Bt10.6-billion fund to

help the 60,000 farmers who could not finance their debts over the past six years.