Telecoms executive Perapong Klinla-or is promoting telecommunications as a tool for corporate responsibility, by helping farmers and others with timely information
Perapong Klinla-or, a vice-president of mobile phone operator Dtac, is helping to turn information technology into a powerful tool for corporate social responsibility and national development.
Over the past two years Dtac, the country's second largest mobile phone company, has been providing real-time market prices of key farm commodities to subscribers at no charge. This is beneficial in two ways. First, the company gets a good image and customer response from doing so. And second, the firm is helping to promote sustainable development in Thailand.
To begin with, the *1677 service allows farmers in rural areas to access market information so that they can manage their farm production more efficiently.
Previously, the majority of farmers did not have instant access to market information, so they often sold their crops at the wrong time and for a disadvantageous price.
"At present, the service covers the prices of rice, tapioca, corn and sugar cane, which are the country's major economic crops," says Perapong.
"Our service also works well with the government's farm price guarantee scheme, which helps to ensure that farmers do not lose money from crop plantation [because they can enter into contracts with the government to sell crops at a certain predetermined price guaranteed by the government].
"Our service at *1677, which we call the information superhighway, also advises farmers on crop variety improvement, so that they can boost farm productivity.
"We also encourage and help farmers to use more natural fertilisers and insecticides, as part of our campaign for organic farming, which is good for the environment.
"In fact, this public service dates back to earlier efforts initiated by Boonchai Benjarongkul, the Dtac chairman [even before he sold a sizeable stake in Dtac to Telenor of Norway].
"The Samneuk Rak Ban Kerd Foundation was originally set up by Boonchai to carry out corporate social work. Afterwards, these initiatives received continued support from Telenor.
"We've even managed to link with supporters in Norway.
"For example, there was a recent campaign for Norwegain youths to do shoe-shining to generate income to pay for a charity's surgical costs for Thai disabled kids," says Perapong, who joined Dtac in 2001.
According to Perapong, the Dtac campaign is also aimed at helping the poor in rural areas make a decent living, and there is a network of several hundred trained volunteers who are willing to give advice on how to earn a supplementary farm income.
"In the coming years, we hope to connect more rural people to this network so that we can further boost the potential of our programme to help re-allocate resources for a more balanced national development.
"As part of our corporate responsibility policy, Dtac was also involved in disseminating timely information to contain the spread of 2009 influenza. We did so via SMS, MMS, video clips and community radio, in order to reach remote communities nationwide.
"When connected with Google Maps, we could actually send maps showing areas affected by the 2009 flu via the SMS service, based on data provided by public health volunteers in remote places nationwide," he says.
Currently, about 200,000 Dtac customers use the *1677 service, which also covers natural disaster alerts, especially when there are flash floods and landslides in vulnerable areas across the country. The natural disaster alerts are provided in cooperation with the Peun Peung Pa Foundation.
Dtac's initiatives show that corporate responsibility can indeed go a long way for the public good.