Aid fund agrees to put rubber subsidy to PM

THE OFFICE of the Rubber Replanting Aid Fund agreed yesterday to propose to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra that the government assist rubber farmers with a seven-month subsidy at the rate of Bt2,520 per rai – with a cap of 25 rai (4 hectares) per person – in an attempt to end their prolonged protest. 

The decision was reached at a meeting held in Bangkok, at which it was also decided that the amount would be paid to each rubber farmer instead of to each household.

The leaders of rubber farmers in Songkhla province, meanwhile, said there would be no blockade of the Sadao border crossing connecting Thailand and Malaysia, while protest leaders in the whole of the Southern region said they would give the government three months to resolve the issue and demanded that rubber farmers without legal land title, as well as rubber harvesters, should also be entitled to the assistance.

Prasit Meedsaen, caretaker director of the Rubber Replanting Aid Fund, said a common understanding had been reached. He said rubber farmers should earn Bt90 for a kilogram of rubber as a result of the fund providing a subsidy of Bt12 per kilo. Rubber currently fetches Bt78 a kilo.

He added that the price of rubber was now on the upswing, and would likely go above Bt90 per kilo. 

The assistance will last for a period of seven months and the government will use a budget of Bt21.2 billion to aid the more than 900,00 rubber-farming households. 

Prasit urged farmers to share the aid fairly with rubber harvesters, although he said harvesters who are migrant workers would not be covered by the scheme because the money comes from Thai taxpayers.

Moreover, farms qualifying for the subsidies would be those whose trees were no more than 25 years old, he added.

Meanwhile, protest leaders want the government not to take any action against those farmers who have blocked the streets in recent weeks, with the exception of criminal cases. 

They also want the government to do away with the capping of the age of qualifying rubber trees at 25 years, and to give an assurance that farmers with no legal land title would benefit from the scheme, too. 

It is now up to the prime minister to decide on these matters, they said.

Saksarit Sriprasart, the coordinator of Southern region rubber-farmer protesters, said after yesterday’s meeting with the government that the protesters had not received any monetary support from opposition politicians. 

“Not a single baht,” he said, adding that the matter was not a political one. 

He said the group had petitioned the government 19 times but had been consistently neglected until now, so they had had no choice but to block roads to draw attention from the public and the media. 

Saksarit also said he had spent Bt2,000 to make his way to Bangkok to attend the meeting. Rubber farmers, he insisted, had been enduring hardship for two years and felt they had no recourse other than to protest.