tokyoblond

Thank you so much TerryLH for your information - it helped me a lot.... best get down to the SS office tomorrow to sort things out

I am hoping that someone with greater knowledge than me can help with this one....

We run a small English school. About 2 years ago the Labor Office told us that all employees (including foreigners) must enroll in the Government Social Insurance program, as part of the work permit application. We had no problem with that. All staff have paid into the program since then - the Thai staff had always been enrolled anyway, and we cancelled the private health care plan that we had (to save money!).

Everything has been fine for the last 2 years - we all have medical cards and I have personally used it (only once).

Fast forward to this week - we have just been told that the foreign staff have no right to enroll in the Government program, and never should have been... even though it was the same office that told us originally that we must be enrolled. This seems to go against everything I have read here on ThaiVisa.

When asked about refunding the money that they have taken for the last two years, the reply was (and I am not joking here) "They are foreigners - they can afford to lose some money!"

I don't know if this is just some individual in the Labor Office who has a grudge against foreigners, or if this is a new(?) policy on the Government's part.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - many thanks!

Hi richjp - don't know if this will help you or not, but I moved from Japan (Tokyo) to Thailand three years ago, on the same basis as you - teaching job. I went to the Thai Embassy in Tokyo and got the Non-Imm B visa with no problems at all. You will need a letter of job offer from the company in Bangkok + copes of their company papers and (if I remember) the school's Education Licence. It took three days to get the visa, but it was only two trips - one to apply and one to pick up. Sounds like the school is looking for the easy route (i.e. less work for them!) by expecting you to do the worrying about entering Thailand. As I said, it was three years ago, so I don't know if there have been any changes since then...

thank you for that!

Same problem here in Prachuap. I have been complaining to TOT for several months. Both international and domestic connections suck. First few times, the engineer came out, looked at the problem, looked again, scratched his head, said it's OK now and left.... after doing nothing! Eventually my frustration led me to call the TOT helpline every morning, with the promise that an engineer would come out/they would call me back.... but no engineer and no call backs ever came.

The latest in my three-month saga was their suggestion that fibre-optic cable would solve the problem - great, I though! I don't mind paying more per month if the problem is solved. Engineers came out, did their 'survey' and declared that it was possible if I paid for the cable installation to my soi from the TOT station. A sum total of 8,000 Baht.... then TOT could sell the cable connection to everybody else in the soi, which would degrade the service that I paid for! So TOT want me to pay for their infrastructure? Great bit of marketing, guys....

Interestingly, the times when the engineer did initially come out to check, the internet connection would 'miraculously' improve about 10 minutes before he arrived, and would very quickly revert to its original level about 1 hour after he left..... the cynic in me suspects that there is a secret cable connection that TOT keeps free for just such occasions, then the engineer is justified in saying 'look, everything ok now' when he gets off his lazy ass to do an engineering call. Now, that couldn't possibly be the case.... could it?