OPINION
Quite clearly the Government has simply not thought through the impression of the insurance provisions imposed by the Thailand Pass on “budget tourists” and likewise on current and prospective retirees in Thailand.
The sobering reality is that it’s nicely nigh impossible for individuals, 70 years and above, to obtain health insurance aside from at exorbitant rates. The insurance necessities, USD 50k (1.6m THB), while rational on the surface, will undoubtedly block the backpacker/budget tourist cohort and concurrently devastate these long-term elderly Non-Resident Visa holding retirees, lots of whom live on mounted pensions and have been attracted to remain in Thailand as a pleasant low price haven.
A greenback and a pound go a lot additional in Thailand as everyone knows and, as all retirees know, we contribute each day to local households and the native economies. บริการติดตั้งโซล่าเซลล์ราคาถูก appear to turn out to be de-facto ATM’s for these in our households…….that in turn sustain us.
At current to achieve a Retirement Visa one must negotiate a bureaucratic maze, “aka” the Immigration Department, and people similar to myself, should deposit 800k baht in a “dead” Thai bank account incomes say 1% or less in interest which is then taxed. Ninety-day reports and the prices of a visa are “manageable”.
But the gradual demise of Kao San Road is now assured as “budget tourists” and retirees alike, who collectively maintain street distributors, meals stalls tuk-tuk drivers and a variety of different service providers are locked out of the economy to make means for people who keep in luxurious hotels and villas and sweep past the Sois of their chauffeur driven limousines.
I wish to emphasise that I am a very contented seventy three year outdated retiree residing on a fixed pension in the NE of Thailand and up to this time have had absolutely no hesitation in inviting household and friends to come back to visit, and even to settle down and retire in what was the “Land of Smiles”.
Yet it now appears that the Government has set a course to make certain that its borderline impoverished citizens, both within the cities and in the provinces, stay and can turn out to be even more impoverished as the cash move from “backpackers” and retirees alike is obliterated.
For the nice of the nation I urge the bureaucrats to suppose, and then to assume once more, in the interests not only of those that come to go to but additionally for all those Thai residents who profit, every day, from the cash we happily contribute to the local economic system.
Philip H Nicholls
Thailand