Farmers threaten hunger strike

RUBBER farmers in Trang province are threatening to go on a hunger strike if the government continues to ignore their plight. 

Saksarit Sriprasart, a leader of Trang’s small-scale rubber farmers, yesterday said his group members would fast together from Sunday onwards to pressure the government to heed their demands.

His group has called for the removal of Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister General Chatchai Sarikalya, who reportedly signed an agreement to sell 200,000 tonnes of rubber to a Chinese firm at a price that was Bt15 higher than the market price as of a delivery date in March. 

“The problem is that since the agreement was signed, the price has fallen drastically,” Saksarit said. 

He suspected that investors in both Thailand and foreign countries had colluded in bringing the market price down. 

Saksarit’s group also demanded that the government urgently control commodity prices. In addition, it wanted the government to ban any rubber tapping and compensate rubber farmers during the ban period.

“With the ban, the problem of rubber oversupply in the market should finally end,” he said. He blamed oversupply for the falling price. 

So far, Saksarit said, his group had no plan to join a larger protest planned by various rubber farmer groups. 

Yesterday, small-scale farmers in many southern provinces announced that they would turn up in full force on Sunday morning to press for their demands, which included increasing rubber latex price to Bt60 per kilo. As of yesterday, the market price was just Bt28.50. Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha, meanwhile, yesterday warned rubber farmers against staging a protest, saying that kind of action would not deliver any solution and might even land them in legal trouble. 

“If you take to the streets, you may face legal action,” Prayut said. “I have been trying to help you already. But, you need to think about helping yourselves too.”

Prayut pointed out that some rubber farmers could scrape by these days because they had also grown some other crops to earn supplementary income.

“They grow strawberries and bananas, etc,” he said.

He said rubber farmers who were planning the protest must understand that the government could not subsidise rubber latex prices by as much as Bt30 per kilo. 

“We would probably need about Bt150 billion to do that. But taxpayers’ money needs to be used for various other purposes too, not just the rubber price,” he said.

Prayut added that as long-term solutions to help the rubber sector, his government was now working on a plan to set up a Rubber City and new rubber factories.

For a short-term measure, the government has already approved financial assistance of Bt1,500 per rai, although each family will get no more than Bt22,500.

Chatchai separately said he definitely did not want to see the price of rubber falling. He said authorities were trying to help boost rubber prices as much as they could. For example, the prime minister had planned to assign local administrative bodies to use rubber for road construction. 

“Rubber farmers should have empathy for us too,” he said. 

Trang Governor Dejrat Simsiri said relevant authorities were now expediting financial assistance to farmers who have registered. So far, he said his province had seen just a little over 50,000 rubber farmers signing up for the project.

“In fact, we expected about 130,000 to register themselves,” he said.