One Million Possible Mass Lay-offs Likely: Labour Ministry

[grandpops]

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel that had done well to recover from the devastating blow of the move of 90% of airbusiness to Swampy. I often stay the night before a flight (no hassle in the mornings etc) and things were looking up for it. Last night, it was like tumbleweed blowing through the place. Since the well thought out plan by PAD, occupancy has plummeted to 8%. A senior member of staff told me last night that if things do not pick up significantly within 3 months the hotel will close. Very sad for all the staff. Well done PAD! (and that is just one hotel, there are similar stories throughout the city).

Trouble is a lack of foresight. Many of these businesses found fit to get involve and supply the PAD with food and shelter etc. If enough people in and around BKK had an iota of common sense or a concept of cause and effect they would have been more vocal against this Fascist Coup.

For evil and Fascism to triumph it is enough for good men to do nothing. And many were guilty of doing nothing.

Stand up next time, this was a small rag tag gathering that fed on apathy.

[Johpa]

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel .......

Well there are a few of us older Thai hands who will shed no tears at the demise of the Don Muang Amari, once the bastion of triple pricing based solely on race: one price for Thais and Chinese, double that for Farangs, and a price in the middle for a Thai-Farang couple.

That aside, the national economic systems that are doing relatively well are those with a strong central government that are guiding their domestic business world in specific directions with funding opportunities, the internal version of installing tariffs and protectionism without violating external treaties. Thailand has a weak central government and no vision. The country is simply not competitive outside the sex industry. The trend in the larger tourist industry is already shifting towards eastern neighbors.

[samgrowth]

Don't worry. Once the baby face become PM, he would create 2 million new jobs. 2 million PAD guard to be nationaliized to patrol along with the useless Thai police.

[VegasVic]

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel that had done well to recover from the devastating blow of the move of 90% of airbusiness to Swampy. I often stay the night before a flight (no hassle in the mornings etc) and things were looking up for it. Last night, it was like tumbleweed blowing through the place. Since the well thought out plan by PAD, occupancy has plummeted to 8%. A senior member of staff told me last night that if things do not pick up significantly within 3 months the hotel will close. Very sad for all the staff. Well done PAD! (and that is just one hotel, there are similar stories throughout the city).

Yes, well done indeed! The PAD didn't think this thing through very well and that is putting it mildly The PAD pulls this stunt right before the begining of the tourist season, and in a year when the worldwide economy was already in a severe downturn. Thats kind of like shooting yourself in both feet The tourisim industry might be the first to feel the impact of PAD's childish antics, but it will be the loss of future foriegn investment in Thailand that will be the real painful fallout for Thailand.

[VegasVic]

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel that had done well to recover from the devastating blow of the move of 90% of airbusiness to Swampy. I often stay the night before a flight (no hassle in the mornings etc) and things were looking up for it. Last night, it was like tumbleweed blowing through the place. Since the well thought out plan by PAD, occupancy has plummeted to 8%. A senior member of staff told me last night that if things do not pick up significantly within 3 months the hotel will close. Very sad for all the staff. Well done PAD! (and that is just one hotel, there are similar stories throughout the city).

Trouble is a lack of foresight. Many of these businesses found fit to get involve and supply the PAD with food and shelter etc. If enough people in and around BKK had an iota of common sense or a concept of cause and effect they would have been more vocal against this Fascist Coup.

For evil and Fascism to triumph it is enough for good men to do nothing. And many were guilty of doing nothing.

Stand up next time, this was a small rag tag gathering that fed on apathy.

Very sad indeed, just like it was sad 75 years ago when the German people put up with these loud funny looking guys parading around in their brown shirts and took no action against them early on! Come to think of it, brown shirts-yellow shirts, very close

[animatic]

The National Economic Developement Board decided it would be a good idea,

for the government to " Laung measures" to somehow

'prevent new graduates from entering the job market'....

HUH???

So where do they go????

Oh yes, keep them in school, offer training courses...

Keep them in school? On who's dime?

Just DO NOT LIST them on employment statistics?

Leave them supported by the family as the economy tanks,

so the government can look better not having worse NUMBERS to show...

Are they to just go home and wait till the government

decided they can be considered employable?

One of the more ill considered burocratic speaches ever to make a front page.

This 900,000 number of unemployeed represents 2.5% of over all workforce.

Of course economists say much under 4% is rarely EVER reached,

So that number is BS...

[TAWP]

Find ways to hide them from statistics...sounds like exactly what the former socialist government in my government did to pretend the numbers was maintained at the same level...or got better just before elections. Until a revision-agency started asking questions and normal people started questioning what was up.

But most people won't question numbers as released by the government PR News Agency...

[sassienie]

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel that had done well to recover from the devastating blow of the move of 90% of airbusiness to Swampy. I often stay the night before a flight (no hassle in the mornings etc) and things were looking up for it. Last night, it was like tumbleweed blowing through the place. Since the well thought out plan by PAD, occupancy has plummeted to 8%. A senior member of staff told me last night that if things do not pick up significantly within 3 months the hotel will close. Very sad for all the staff. Well done PAD! (and that is just one hotel, there are similar stories throughout the city).

Yes and I believe this is a middle period of the end for the tourist industry in Thailand.

There are several factors involved with the collapse of tourism in Thailand which has been in creeping decline over several years and the recent political crisis could be the final nail in the coffin for tourist industries and many other industries through knock on effects.

Greed, with the belief that Farangs have a bottomless pit of cash to spend, dramatic price increases within the entertainment establishments, huge hypes in airfares and travelling taxes, the toning down of adult venues that Thailand was renowned for and imposed earlier closing times for bars etc, massage parlours calling themselves spas and charging up to 4 times the price plus more sometimes, of a standard massage parlour.

Hotels often double their rates during what they call the high seasons, lack of good package deals and price concessions on tours and crap exchange rates.

All this plus more has had the effect of making tourists look elsewhere for better value holiday deals.

Now perhaps the Thais may learn that Farangs also have their spending limits.

The collapse of the tourist industry is taking a heavy toll on employment due to the knock on affects and the whole Thailand tourist industry needs to be revamped.

They may get away with squeezing the golden goose, but it seems Thailand has killed it off altogether.

Edited December 11, 2008 by sassienie

[h90]

An Internet company, taking creditcards and need good internet connection has it difficult in thailand.

If you would make that simple, you could create a lot of jobs in a short time, which sells cheap handmade product and creates even more jobs....

I would disagree.

First of all, the payment service is more than often handled by a third party. It may not look like you are exiting a sites web-page and anything is handled externally, but it is.

either you pay a 10 % fee or you go with a local bank. getting the contracts needs at least 6 month and does not work without bribe.....Major headache.

Secondly, the company putting up the service doesn't need anything above a 10Mb connection.

but where do you get a real 10 Mb? I am bit outside Bangkok on Buddy Internet and it is simply a joke. Before on IPStar it is almost not useable. You work between: You work between: Kasikorn down, buddy down, international gateway down and even if the speed is fast the lag time is sometimes terrible.

You don't serve the content from a Thai webserver if you are aiming for an international audience. There are web-hosts all over the world that you can use, all depending on the region of your designated customers.

Sadly a lot of companies are either re-locating to or directly setting up in for example Singapore (which is far more expensive) due to the larger pool of experienced staff to choose from, better international standing with investors and...well, since other companies in the same industry are located there. Some content companies are setting up in China (including few gamestudios like UBISoft Shanghai), but they are really the exception.

In any way, counting the number of internet based/content creating (some atleast)/enterprise software focused/game companies (any plattform) per capita, Thailand is really...really far behind.

It takes us 6 month to fill one (1) position and there are never basically any senior developers to find.

Nobody could yet tell me how to export small items value less than 20 USD so that you get VAT refunded.

[TAWP]

h90>> If you really need help to set something up, you can PM me as 'my' company can handle it for you.

[h90]

h90>> If you really need help to set something up, you can PM me as 'my' company can handle it for you.

thanks.....No everything is running well now. But the setup (specially if you are away from the center of Bangkok) needs instead of 2-3 month like in any european country, 12-15 month.

Just another example which came into my mind....no real internetbanking possible in Thailand. We need to go to the bank for every money transfer to China.

Usually I contact with China, when agree on everything I transfer the money and email them the screenshoot of the money transfer.

Here:

First need an invoice from China

Second Fill out the forms

Third wait till the right branch of the right bank is open (wrong branch may tell you money transfers outside Thailand aren't possible at all).

Fourth: send someone to the bank with the form and wait two hours.

Fifth: Explain the bank on the phone that USD means US Dollar and not Hongkong Dollar.

Sixth: Apologize at the Chinese business partner that the bank charged them, instead of me, the foreign bank fees as they did it wrong even it was checkmarked correctly on the form.

Simillar story with customs:

EMS is the worst...need half a day of my smartest guy to clear and often enough they want bribe (but at least it is cheaper to pay half the tax).

FedEx /TNT, etc often enough they come with that nonsense form which requests the cataloge with the items.....we tried the clearance always fast and tried several ways and the only working way is to have one angry southern Thai shooting to the customs officers and calling them ugly animals and threaten to kill them....That results in fast processing and the right tax amounts.

That country is for sure not fit for having internet shops where products come in and go out every day in large amounts handled by 1-2 people only. Salarys are low here, so you can have plenty of staff but it isn't a target to have double staff than somewhere else.

Surprisingly good experiences with post-offices.

[samgrowth]

With all those factory girls jobless, I wonder where would most of them go. Is Chuwit still accepting application? Or is his tube already full.