OPINION

Slim state albatrosses

Re: "Debt-ridden group lays off 961 staff", (BP, July 1).

The Business Organisation of the Office of the Welfare Promotion Commission for Teachers and Educational Personnel has laid off 93% of its 1,035 staff due to staggering debts and a lack of liquidity -- the exact same causes that forced THAI into bankruptcy. I laud Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan for, as he said, basing his decision on data, not emotions.

Minister Nataphol says that the survivors will be sufficient to carry out the organisation's mission -- which either means that 93% of the organisation's staff have been basically spinning wheels, or the organisation's raison d'etre has been streamlined.

As with the private sector worldwide, the wave of closings/drastic cost cuts in state enterprises is just beginning. The government should follow the saying, "When life serves you lemons, make lemonade": turn crisis into opportunity to prune all state enterprises so that the survivors meet the same standards as their private sector counterparts -- or become history.

Start from the basics: Can a private enterprise be more effective/efficient at achieving a given state enterprise's reason for being? For example, instead of having the Government Savings/Housing Bank, why not give tax breaks for savings/investment/mortgage programmes run by commercial banks? Instead of having THAI on stand-by 24/7 to evacuate Thais from harm's way, why not charter private carriers on an as-needed basis -- as we and many other countries did at Wuhan? Where we absolutely must have a state enterprise to perform a given function, require that it sustain the same level of achievement as their private sector competitors on each key performance indicator.

Use this opportunity to make our entire state enterprise sector a lot smaller, slimmer, and cost-effective. Then, use the savings to help the tens of millions of low-income Thais laid low by Covid-19.

Re: "Covid crisis compounds new school-term woes", (BP, July 2).

Reading the story of the woman caught stealing school uniforms for her children, who would not be touched by the human kindness of the other shoppers in the store who banded together to help the poor woman from their own meagre pockets? It reminds us that when faced with their immediate distress, the natural impulse of ordinary people in Thailand as everywhere else is to help those in need.

My immediate thought was that it is perhaps time to abolish uniforms when they cause such needless misery. The second series of thoughts were: Why has the Thai government failed to help this family and the many others like them in desperate need due to the Covid emergency? Why are the rich of Thailand not asking, not demanding, to be taxed far more to help their fellow Thais in need?