THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Probe into misappropriation of funds for disabled sought

Probe into misappropriation of funds for disabled sought

A REPRESENTATIVE of people with disabilities yesterday petitioned the Office of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to probe various associations advocating the cause of those with disability amid allegations that they had siphoned off as much as Bt1.5 billion a year from training/seminar expenses and funds for employing the disabled.

The president of the Network for Protection of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Preeda Limnontakul, also wanted a probe against state officials whose negligence had allowed these groups to cheat people.
Preeda submitted the petition to the NHRC Human Rights Protection Bureau director Anyarat Engchuan. He said many victims lacked knowledge about a vocationally-trained disabled person’s legal right for a job with Bt109,000 per annum salary. Thailand has 1.7 million disabled persons, he said. 
Preeda said the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Act 2007 required a business establishment to hire one disabled person per 100 workers, otherwise it had to contribute to the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Fund an amount equivalent to what it would have paid for hiring such personnel.
It turned out that 5,000 out of the 25,000 disable persons said to be employed did not work, though their names were being used, Preeda alleged. These people did not know that they were each entitled to a Bt9,500 monthly salary. They were cheated by the mediating associations and foundations which paid them only Bt500-Bt3,000 per month, he alleged. 
As a business can contribute to the fund – which was worth Bt6 billion a year – it offered a loophole for corruption, he said. He estimated the damage from such corruption at Bt1 billion a year. Explaining their modus operandi, he said, the associations and foundations gathered name lists of disabled persons in provinces. These were submitted to the Social Development and Human Security Ministry’s Department for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities and the Labour Ministry’s Department of Employment to propose vocational training/seminars, he said. They then siphoned money off from the budgets allocated from the fund by, for example, claming a speaker’s fee of Bt300,000 when they actually paid the speaker only Bt30,000.

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