Published on Nov 25, 2005

Deputy Prime Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul suggested yesterday that more than five million of the estimated six million Thais suffering from disabilities were largely left to fend for themselves.
Many disabled people have no house registration or ID card, and only a quarter of them (23 per cent) get beyond prathom-level (junior school) education, said Suchai, who is chairman of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth). Suchai said that, based on estimates by the World Health Organisation from last year, one in 10 people in any country have some form of disability, so it was likely that more than six million Thais have disabilities.
He went on to explain that the country’s disability registration as of August 31 listed 403,719 people with disabilities. And of these, 22,808 people (5.6 per cent) had neither a 13-digit ID number, nor a house registration and ID card, which prevented them from getting access to basic services, to which they were legally entitled.
Suchai said that if the new estimates are correct, more than five million disabled Thais are not registered with authorities at all and therefore might be missing even elementary rights.
Despite the Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons Act, signed into effect in 1991, public welfare for disabled people has not improved adequately, Suchai said.
“They still lack basic security and are at the risk of exclusion from society,” he said.
He added that although the National Education Act 1999 prescribed clear guidelines for pro?viding educational services for people with disabilities, little progress has been made, Suchai said. He cited a report by the National Statistics Office from 2002 that only 23 per cent of registered disabled people graduated from prathom level.
ThaiHealth’s second vice-chairman Professor Udomsil Srisangnam said a survey on disabled people’s employment conducted in 2001 found that only a third of people with disabilities over the age of 15 were employed. Almost half (48 per cent) of those employed earned less than Bt2,500 a month, while a little over a third had to subsist on salaries of between Bt2,500 to Bt5,000 a month.

The Nation