New body to oversee education reform: charter drafters

A “Labour Bank” will also spring into service to provide workers with convenient access to loans, the charter drafters have determined.
The Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) yesterday finished drafting clauses for several key areas such as education, labour and healthcare.
They resolved that a new body would be set up within one year of the new charter coming into force for the purpose of studying and scrutinising national education policies as well as of developing human resources for the educational sector.
“This new body will become the main mechanism for educational reform,” Amornwich Nakornthap said in his capacity as a National Reform Council member who is part of the charter-drafting process.
The CDC invited Amornwich and another NRC member, Prapapat Niyom, to a joint meeting before it concluded the education clauses.
The new independent body will have the mandate to lay down strategies and policies on educational reform, develop human resources more efficiently, and provide funds for people who want to study.
“The body will work with the Education Ministry without interfering in the ministry’s projects,” Amornwich said.
Reformers believe this new body will serve to decentralise power in the education system, with educational reform seeing success within 10
years.
Prapapat said every educational unit should undergo reform because available records showed that while the country spent a lot of money on the education system, the results were not impressive.
This draft provision also called for the improvement of vocational education to ease the shortage of labour in some fields within two years after the new constitution came into force.
Meanwhile, charter drafters have agreed to establish a Labour Bank based on information that many workers have no choice but to borrow money from loan sharks.
The idea of a Labour Bank survived heated debate to be included in the charter. Opponents argued that existing state-owned banks such as the Government Savings Bank and Krungthai Bank could respond to workers’ financial needs and there should be no need to set up yet another institution.
Supporters, however, said workers had clamoured for the establishment of such a specific bank and studies had supported the proposal.
On public-health reform, CDC vice chairman Dr Chuchai Supawong said charter drafters had resolved to prescribe equality, sufficiency, and similar standards for healthcare security programmes.
Such clauses arose after several CDC members complained that Thais had unequal access to good healthcare services.
“A study shows that government officials have six times better public healthcare than other citizens, therefore decentralising the Central region’s budget from other regions and small communities could reduce this problem,” a CDC member said.
Chuchai said that in addition to addressing inequality, this draft clause prescribed the participation by all relevant parties in health-security reform.
He added that this charter, moreover, would require a focus on primary care and an area-based, people-oriented approach to providing healthcare services.
On natural resources, the environment and city planning, charter drafters yesterday resolved to reform the environmental-justice process.
“This reform will include the estimation of the costs of environmental damage and legal mechanisms to enforce rulings related to environmental cases,” a source said.