Ministry seeks social welfare for informal workers

The Labour Ministry has called on the government to set up a new social security fund to provide benefits for more than 48 million informal workers in the country.

In order to provide sickness, maternity, disability, child allowance, old-age and unemployment benefits to its members, the fund will need at least Bt26 billion per month to survive, the ministry’s permanent secretary Dr Somkiat Chayawong said.

He said he had proposed this idea at the August 21 meeting of the three national healthcare schemes, which was chaired by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

His proposal is aimed at providing welfare and benefits as well as cutting down the burden for some 48 million informal workers, such as farmers, taxi drivers and motorcycle taxi drivers who cannot afford to cover their medical bills. These people will be automatically registered as members and receive the basic sickness, maternity, disability and death benefits. Members of this fund will not be required to pay anything, while the government will provide Bt550 per month for each of them.

If they want extra privileges such as child allowance, old-age and unemployment benefits then they need to contribute Bt550 per month.

According to the Labour Ministry's estimates, about 29 million informal workers would be able to join the co-payment scheme.

"We expect this scheme to reduce the government's financial burden for the next 20 years," Somkiat said.

Thailand has three national health care schemes, namely the National Health Security Fund which provides medical benefits to 48 million, the Social Security Fund (SSF) providing medical benefit and social welfare to nearly 9 million employees, and the Civil Servant Medical Benefit (CSMB) covering about 6 million government's officials.

Somkiat said the National Health Security Office was concerned about providing medical benefits to 48 million people who are not registered members of SSF or CSMB because it would be difficult to sustain the new fund since few informal workers could afford to pay for additional privileges. In addition, the government needs to amend the Social Security Act to establish this fund.

Aide Access Foundation director Nimitr Tian-udom, who is a member of the NHSO board, said he agreed with the Labour Ministry's proposal to extend the benefits and welfares of SSF but the ministry should provide only social welfares not medical benefits to its members because it is not good at providing medical benefit to its members.

" SSO should know what it can do and can not do," he said

Meanwhile, NHSO's secretary-general Dr Winai Swasdivorn said he does not think anybody will respond to the idea of setting up a new fund.