OPINION

Some get no holidays

Re: "Our long holiday from reality", (Asia Focus, May 9).

I would like to know how many people get no benefit at all from public holidays, and/or have no paid holidays.

I am aware many small businesses such as bars, restaurants, and guesthouses don't provide staff with any paid holidays. People work on public holidays and also have no annual, paid holiday entitlement. How many million people is this? In addition we have huge numbers of people who are self-employed, from farmers to street vendors to small shop-owners. Again, how many million people does this represent?

I suspect holidays are for those working in banking and other corporates, and those in government jobs. I have no facts to substantiate this, merely what I see every day in my community.

Re: "Department mulls hiking taxes", (BP, May 10).

Is the Excise Department really so ignorant that it believes, in 2016, that coffee is harmful to health? Study after study have shown that coffee, at least in moderate quantities, can have a positive effect on health (as can red wine, for that matter, but not Thai whisky). If the department really wants to raise taxes on unhealthy drinks, it should focus on sugary sodas and fruit juices.

Prior to this year's alarming heat wave my small village has never had a water problem and the locals have usually managed with a shallow well somewhere in their gardens.

With the small amount of rain from the last not-so-wet rainy season and very few winter storms, the shortage of water started to become apparent by March when several wells started to run dry. Since then the high temperatures and the lack of precipitation have combined to cause the local farmers a severe monetary problem.

It's all very well for a local government official to announce you need to stay indoors and drink one litre of water an hour but does this person have any suggestions for how we cover the costs? At 8 baht a litre, bottled drinking water could now be costing poor farming families over 100 baht a day, and that's before delivery costs for tank water for washing, bathing and cleaning that amounts to an extra 200 baht a time.

The heat on its own is bad enough but the extra expense in countering the drought is leaving country citizens short of cash. Are the cities facing this problem? Is grass getting watered and cars cleaned where you live? Spare a thought for all those people washing in scarce water carried in from a distant tank. It's a tough life out on the land.

The Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) faces growing opposition in the United States from NGOs, rights groups and well-organised civil society activists. Having been devised in a seven-year long, highly secretive process, its contents were chiefly assembled under the guidance of 500 trade advisers representing multinational corporate interests, most notably those of the agro-chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

To take effect, the TPP must be passed by the US Congress, and ratification appears increasingly unlikely as opposition to this rapacious corporate power grab mounts dramatically.

Might it not benefit Thailand to adopt a wait-and-see approach to the TPP rather than race into what amounts to a dark abyss of higher-priced medicine and loss of sovereignty to those whose only motive is greed?