Thai Lawmakers Pay Rise Waste Of Taxpayers Money

[webfact]

Pay rise waste of taxpayers' money: Poonsub

By Satien Wiriyaphanpongsa

The Nation

An ex-director of the Budget Bureau is yet another prominent figure to publicly oppose the pay rises lawmakers will be given, pointing to the many benefits already enjoyed by MPs and senators at the cost of taxpayers' money.

Poonsub Piya-anant, who served as chief of the Budget Bureau chief in 1999 and an ombudsman between 2002 and 2008, said the benefits included the overseas trips, domestic air tickets and salaries of their assistants and advisers.

Each year, every Senate and House committee obtains Bt5.2 million each to cover overseas trips, in addition to notebook computers for lawmakers bought with the taxpayers' money, Poonsub said. He also said state funds were required to cover the wages paid to the lawmakers' assistants and advisers, and their air tickets to anywhere in the country.

In an article entitled "The Principles and Guideline for a Balanced Budget within Five Years", Poonsub called for careful consideration before increasing the salaries of people in the public sector, except civil servants, who are often paid "very little" and work very hard to make ends meet.

He noted that though MPs, senators and local administrators contest elections and volunteer to serve the country, they are often accused of overspending on their election campaigns. Also, MPs and senators have a long break from work when the Parliament is in recess.

The Budget Bureau's ex-chief has also proposed changes in the budgeting process, such as reducing the funds for overseas "educational trips", money that is, in many cases, actually spent in tourist destinations. He said about Bt8 billion to Bt9 billion was spent each year to cover the cost of sending public officials, including those from independent organisations and local administrative organisations, on overseas educational trips.

"The results of such trips are never clear and cannot be measured easily," Poonsub wrote. He added that the knowledge from foreign countries was widely available on the Internet now, and more information can be obtained upon request from online media organisations and foreign embassies and agencies.

"There are problems with efficiency and responsibility in terms of MPs' performance and intervention from Cabinet members, MPs and politicians often demoralises bureaucrats," he said in the article.

The former Budget Bureau director also warned that salary increases in the public sector would result in decreased investment in public infrastructure projects, which in turn would affect the country's competitiveness and efforts to solve the poverty problem. He said that despite the public-private partnership arrangement in some large-scale development projects, the taxpayers' money would have to be spent on repaying loans for those projects.

-- The Nation 2010-12-18

[asiawatcher]

Perhaps the best headline to these wasteful sponges on Thai society yet.

[TAWP]

He said about Bt8 billion to Bt9 billion was spent each year to cover the cost of sending public officials, including those from independent organisations and local administrative organisations, on overseas educational trips.

How about list names and pictures of the top 50 spenders and publish it somewhere?

[cup-O-coffee]

I wonder how many Thais there are, whom I see every day passing within my vision, who actually pay taxes in full. I will wager that the percentage is quite small. It must be a difficult burden for this small percentage to bear. Reading this article, I do not get a strong sense of assurance that the minuscule taxes that are paid, are actually doing any good beyond the self-seeking, political spending level.

That being said, it almost seems to be a cleverly contrived form of collecting tea money under the guise of "paying taxes". It is plausible, since the ones being extorted have no recourse of action against the extortionists, who charge excessively for in-excessive services to the ones coughing up the dough!