Govt urged to cover informal workers

Wilaiwan Sae-Tia, deputy chairwoman of the Thai Labour Solidarity, said she agreed with the Labour Ministry in establishing a new social security care scheme that allows informal workers to receive medical treatment at state hospitals.

The new scheme will provide medical benefits and welfare including sickness, maternity, disability, child allowance, and old age and unemployment benefits to its members.

Informal workers will be registered automatically as members and receive the basic sickness, maternity, disability and death benefits. Members of this fund will not be required to pay anything, while the government will provide Bt550 per month for each of them.

If they wanted extra privileges – such as child allowance, old age and unemployment benefits – then they would need to contribute Bt550 per month.

Wilaiwan said informal workers could pay to get medical benefits and welfare under the scheme for only Bt100-Bt200 per month, if they did not have fixed monthly wages.

Moreover, they would require only five forms of welfare benefit under this scheme – disability, death, maternity, children allowance and old age pension.

They would not receive unemployment benefits or medical treatment under this scheme as the National Health Security Scheme already provided benefits to cover them for accident or illness.

She added the Labour Ministry did not need to set up a new fund to establish the universal social security scheme.

The ministry would just amend the Social Security Law to extend benefits and welfare under Article 40 to cover informal workers.

Additionally, the government would also pay 50 percent of the insurance premium and informal workers would be required to pay another 50 per cent into the scheme.

In a related development, the Finance Ministry has ordered civil servants, who’ve suffered recently from chronic diseases and received treatment for at least three months, to re-register at the state hospital that treated their condition.

The chronic diseases listed include myocardial infarction, heart failure, ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke, and Aids. The civil servant patients must register with only one hospital to receive treatment.

The ministry wants to stop civil servants from receiving unnecessary treatment from several hospitals to cut the financial burden on the government budget, caused by abuse of medicine benefits and treatment by some civil servants.

The ministry will also stop providing glucosamine sulphate, used to treat osteoarthritis, as it has found no scientific evidence the medicine can effectively cure the disease.

The Senior Officials’ Association, led by Major General Poonsook Paowarat, yesterday opposed the Finance Ministry’s plan, saying that to stop providing glucosamine might affect patients who‘d already received the treatment.

She said she had handed a petition to former Public Health Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai, a member of Parliament’s Public Health Committee, to ask the Finance Ministry to remove this financial control measure.

Public Health Minister Witthaya Buranasiri, who chairs the Drug System Development Committee, said the committee would ask the Finance Ministry to revise its plan to allow civil servants to receive treatment for chronic diseases at only one hospital.

He said the Finance Ministry’s plan would affect the Public Health Ministry’s medical services because in the past the Health Ministry has allowed patients to receive medicine at hospitals near their homes, without having to go to the hospital at which they are registered.