Rice farmers are fed up; they want to see money now
Rice farmers are really fed up now: they want to see money for the paddy (unhusked rice) they have handed in, and not be sent to the ground all the time. Tomorrow they will again block highway 117, which connects Phitsanulok with Nakhon Sawan. Ten thousand farmers are expected.
Yesterday Khwanchai Kerdkhanmak, director of the branch in Pichit (card) of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, assured farmers that the bank would start paying 170 farmers today. The government had just transferred XNUMX million baht.
One of the farmers present accuses the government of playing political games. “I think this has a political motive, because Pichit is not a political stronghold of the government. The government has money, but it has chosen to pay the peasants in their own strongholds first.'
The farmers have been waiting for their money since early October. Paiboon Ruensook, head of the provincial Agricultural and Cooperative office says they desperately need the money to pay off their debts and cover operating costs.
Provincial Agriculture Commission Chairman Banjong Wichitwilailert, who also owns Pichit's largest rice hulling mill, explains that the rice that the government has stored across the country cannot be sold. [We've known that for a long time.] He hopes that the government will transfer another 10 billion baht to the BAAC so that the farmers can be paid by Monday at the latest.
Earlier this month, 117 farmers from Pichit and Kamphaeng Pet also blocked highway 23. They left after the governor promised them they would be paid within a week. In Phitsanulok province, farmers demonstrated in front of the Provincial House and on December 117, XNUMX rice farmers blocked highway XNUMX.
There is also rumbling in the province of Suphan Buri. Provincial Agriculture Commission Chairman Prom Boonmachuay says farmers from this province and Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Nakhon Pathom and Kanchanaburi provinces will block the Noppawong intersection in Nonthaburi unless the government guarantees a payment date.
(Source: Bangkok Post, January 16, 2014)
Photo homepage: Rice farmers protest in Buri Ram on January 9.
Best,
The peasants are in the wrong place again.
They should not stand on the highway, but move to Yingluck's residence.
You can never blame the road users for this political policy.
Incidentally, I believe that poor farmers are never on the street, because the poor farmers have not received a cent subsidy. An ordinary farmer grows only for his own family and a little more for maintenance, as the king also often points out in his very good speeches, which are about a good distribution of the land without money.
It is the buyers who protest and want to receive the subsidy money, while a child could calculate that the government can never pay this without creating a higher national debt.
It is these things why the streets in Bangkok are filled with protesters. It is these demonstrators who are against corruption and do not want to burden their offspring with sky-high national debts.
greetings from Danny