Civil servants on bottom rung struggle to pay bills as their bosses fall into debt
Low-ranking state employees receive inadequate salaries while higher-level civil servants tend to incur larger debts, a recent survey revealed.
Workers in levels 1 and 2 were found to earn less than their cost of living, said the National Statistical Office, which conducted an annual survey on about 11,000 civil servants across the country. The lowest ranked had average earnings of about 3.5 per cent less than their monthly spending, the survey found. It defined spending as including the cost of food, travelling, personal appliances and communications. The payments of, for example, home loans or life insurance premiums were not counted. State employees from levels 3 to 11 were found to have a good balance between income and spending but also a higher amount of debt incurred by themselves or other members of their family. The survey found 81.6 per cent of civil servants had debts totalling Bt195 billion, or about Bt657,449 per family, on average. The higher salaries they earned, the higher debts they incurred, the poll showed. The average debt incurred by civil servants in levels 1 and 2 was about Bt247,608 per family compared to Bt1.3 million in the highest income group.
|
