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Published on July 14, 2007

The Social Development and Human Security Ministry has set itself the ambitious goal of taking better care of the poor and destitute by widening the social safety net and improving access to public welfare in all parts of the country with an emphasis on the local community level. The idea is long overdue.

Thailand's rapid economic and social development in recent decades has put an enormous strain on the family. If the family unit is considered the most basic building block of a healthy society, this fundamental social institution has been in very poor shape for some time.

Extended families, which were once the norm and which used to provide social and financial security for their members, are increasingly being replaced by single families that are either less able or less willing to help relatives outside of the immediate family unit.

Successive governments have neglected to develop a proper national network of social welfare units capable of filling the role that extended families played so effectively in the past.

A plethora of social problems has cropped up and multiplied over the years, including a rise in the number of cases of children, the elderly and helpless disabled people being abandoned and left to fend for themselves with little or no help from other members of their communities.

One of the saddest, most heartbreaking social phenomena of recent times, which is repeatedly reported in the mass media, is that of society's most helpless and marginalised people, such as orphans and bed-ridden elderly, being discarded by the communities they grew up in and where they have lived their entire lives as if they were no more than useless items.

In most cases, these people, who are unable to support themselves and have no one to turn to for assistance, are transferred from their communities to relevant government social welfare institutions at the provincial level or even to another province or part of the country if the provinces in which they live do not have the facilities to care for them.

If the Social Development and Human Security Ministry has its way, all this will change - for the better. The ministry will be creating a network of agencies to provide social welfare services for those who cannot help themselves in 7,000 communities run by a tambon administrative organisation in all of the country's 76 provinces within the next three years.

By bettering the ability of local communities to care for the destitute among them, the government hopes to foster a sense of civic responsibility among local people, encouraging them to take care of their own problems and work towards creating a caring society.

This is part of the decentralisation of government power. Almost Bt300 million of the government's budget has been distributed to tambon administrative organisations or local governments as seed money.

Each community will be required to set up a social welfare fund that must be efficiently run and a social welfare programme, the performance of which is to be judged against measurable and clearly spelled out objectives, such as the number of destitute people it serves and the quality of the care it provides.

However, budgetary allocations and good intentions on the part of government policy makers alone will not translate into better and more humane treatment of the helpless and destitute.

In order for such a good social welfare programme to work the way it should, members of local communities must be enlisted to actively participate, by making donations or volunteering their time for example, so that those on the receiving end of the assistance feel well taken care of and are able to live in dignity.

Members of all relevant government agencies, such as public health workers, social welfare officials, community development workers and non-governmental organisations, must join hands to make this worthy programme a success.

It's time that Thai society relearns the positive social values of old and makes sure compassion for fellow human beings, which is the hallmark of Buddhism, the religion of the great majority of this country, is practised the way it is preached.