Govt stands firm on rubber price
Despite growing pressure from rubber farmers, the government has refused to bow to their demand that the rubber price be pegged at Bt92 per kilo.
Agriculture Minister Yukol Limlamthong yesterday stood by the government’s offer of Bt80 per kilo during an hours-long negotiation session with farmer representatives. Farmers’ leaders from the North and the Northeast walked out of the negotiation room at Government House and lambasted the government for ignoring rubber farmers’ plight.
Meanwhile, the Ramkhamhaeng University Student Organisation plans to join the mass rallies of rubber farmers across the country on Tuesday.
“We are the children of farmers,” president Uthai Yodmanee said yesterday.
Rubber farmers are preparing to stage huge protests in various provinces on September 3 to demand that the government shore up the rubber price, which has plummeted during the past two years.
Uthai said the government had ignored farmers’ problems and was apparently engrossed in the granting of political amnesty. He showed up at Parliament to submit an open letter to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, urging her to show her sincerity by addressing the crisis of plunging crop prices, stopping the politicisation of the protest and investigating the use of force against rubber planters in Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Last Friday, some police and farmers were injured during clashes when the protesters cut off a road. The blockade of the road and a railway continued in the southern province.
While some rubber farmers in other areas have said the railway action is not appropriate, they do not rule out the possibility of occupying roads next Tuesday if their plight continues to be ignored.
“Whether we will block roads depends on how the situation develops,” said Manoon Uppala, chairman of the Wiang Sa Agricultural Cooperative based in Surat Thani.
He believes the rally on Tuesday in Surat Thani will draw more than 5,000 participants.
Songkran Khampisai, chairman of the Beung Kan Rubber Farmers Network, said more than 30,000 farmers in the Northeast would head to the mass rally in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Sikhiu district on Tuesday, where the seizing of a road has been planned.
Prompong Nopparit, spokesman for the Pheu Thai Party, said the government was ready to listen to what rubber farmers had to say.
