[Thailand] PM’s advice ignores realities of poverty, poll finds

from Thai Day

Half of the state workers interviewed for an ABAC poll said the advice given by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to villagers and local authorities in his anti-poverty reality television show is impractical.

A total of 49.2 percent of the respondents said Thaksin’s advice was

“difficult to put into practice,” said Noppadol Kannika, head of Assumption University’s ABAC Poll Center, which surveyed 811 government workers on their views of the show.

The prime minister, who stars in the reality show, has visited villagers in Roi Et’s At Samat district, giving them cash and advice on how to overcome poverty.

But while most of the survey respondents knew about the show, many of them dismissed it as a publicity stunt aimed at halting the government’s declining approval ratings.

“The success of a poverty alleviation program depends on the poor’s willingness to improve the quality of their lives by pursuing opportunities for lifelong education,” Noppadol said.

“They also have to kick old habits such as spending beyond their means.”

Critical to eradicating the poverty problem are the earnest efforts of local government officials to coordinate closely with the public in coming up with solutions, he added.

More than two-thirds of the respondents, 71.7 percent, said they clearly understood what the show is all about, while 3.2 percent said they had no idea what it was.

Asked to state what they thought was the show’s purpose, 61.4 percent said Thaksin’s Backstage Show: Prime Minister indicated that the government was serious about tackling the poverty in the northeastern region.

A quarter of the respondents, 25.6 percent, said it was is a publicity stunt to revive the government’s popularity, while 13 percent said they had no idea what the government wanted to achieve through the show.

Two-thirds of respondents in the survey, which was conducted on January 16-17, were officials and employees of the Interior Ministry.

The majority of respondents, 93 percent, said the show did not present any new information about poverty in the Northeast.

Nine in every 10 said there was nothing new about the way Thaksin had defined the word “poverty” during the show.

However, more than a third of respondents said they had learned “something new” from the broadcast of Thaksin’s anti-poverty mission, ABAC Poll said in a statement.

It was not surprising that At Samat residents had given Thaksin a warm reception, nine in every 10 respondents said.

However, 49.2 percent said Thaksin had been giving villagers “impractical” advice on how to overcome their economic difficulties.

For any poverty eradication program to succeed, the poor themselves must be determined to improve their lives, according to more than a third, or 38.4 percent, of respondents.

A total of 34.5 percent of respondents said state officials play a critical role in solving the poverty problem.

More than one in 10 respondents, 12.9 percent, said poverty eradication programs would be more effective if there was close coordination between the government and the public.

It would also help if poverty eradication programs get a substantial budget, according to 12.4 percent of respondents; local government officials get more decision-making powers, (11.3 percent); and government

officials get a better understanding of the nature of the problem, (10.8 percent).

The government should try to decentralize power so that local government officials can more efficiently coordinate initiatives to address the poverty problem among themselves, the poll found.

Of the survey’s 811 respondents from government offices, 77.6 percent said they knew about the reality show, which began on January 16 and concludes today.

Twenty-two percent of respondents said they did not know about the show.

A tenth, or 10.7 percent, of respondents who could access the UBC channel in their offices, said they have closely monitored the reality show.

On a scale of one to 10, respondents gave Thaksin a 7.4 for his “performance” in the reality show.