A community that you should know when you come to Thailand

by Prateep Ungsongtham Hata

 

 

Hidden away in the centre of Bangkok is a project that focuses on the underprivileged, under-paid and under-housed Thai’s living in extreme poverty. One foundation has worked to change that and here, it’s founder Prateep Unsongtham Hata explains how it began, where it is today and where they hope to change lives in Bangkok.

 

Living in Thailand offers an opportunity to explore interesting culture, food and landmark places, as well as to travel to palaces and temples and serene national parks. However, if you wish to understand another side of life in Thai society, we have a place which you should experience right in the heart of Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand.   

 

Here, low-wage labourers flock in to find shelter for themselves and their family on land belonging to the Port Authority of Thailand (PAT), located in Klong Toey district. The place is famously known as the “Klong Toey Slum”. It is considered the largest poor community in the country, housing 25,000 families with 4 members each on average. Overall, the population is around 100,000 individuals.   

 

More than sixty years ago, the PAT embarked on a port expansion project to facilitate technological imports from abroad and the export of Thai produce. The project absorbed a tremendous number of labourers from the rural parts of the country whose domestic farming had failed to provide for their families. Some families ran into household debts when their crops could not yield any income. Low-wage labourers from the Klong Toey area, as well as those who migrated from the countryside, have made some part of  3,000 rai of empty land adjacent to the PAT their home ever since. 

 

Thai people are normally generous. We donate to the temple and give money to beggars. However, underprivileged people in the slum are seen as trouble-makers. Some see the place as a scandalous spot for crime and drug dealing, even though such things can occur anywhere in the country. 

 

However, we have a helpful community here. Duang Prateep Foundation is one organisation representing the voice of the poor. We have a mission to solve social problems. Our first mission was to achieve the right for the children born in the slum to access schooling, despite not having birth certificates because their families had no official house registration (they were squatters).

 

In 1968, my sister, Mingporn, and I opened a class for children in the slum to help them learn how to read and write. We utilised the living space under our family’s traditional Thai stilt house. We also called on the government to help solve children’s education problems in community. There were no schools for children in the community, and other facilities for poor people in slum were almost non-existent. They were living without a piped water supply, electricity and even the walkways between houses were rickety wood over polluted water. The water flooded in the Rainy Season because there is no way to drain water.

 

There were other problems and obstacles, which included the unhealthy environment, insufficient income for food for each meal, and a lack of community organisation to request government service to improve living standards. These interwoven problems were like a shoelace that knots over and over.

 

We opened a school for kindergarten-age kids up to the primary level because many slum children didn’t suitable documentation, and they couldn’t study in government schools (they were classed as illegal citizens). At our school, parents were asked to pay 1 baht every day for their child to study, thus giving it the name “One Baht a Day School”. However, if the parents didn’t have any money, we did not turn the child away. 

 

Full Story: https://expatlifeinthailand.com/ngo/a-community-that-you-should-know-when-you-come-to-thailand/

 

-- © Copyright Expat Life in Thailand 2020-12-07

 

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