Most Thai people support the government’s cutoff of electricity, internet signals and fuel supplies to Myanmar to combat call-centre gangs in the neighbouring country and they believe some Thai state officials are involved in scammers’ operations, according to a survey by the National Institute of Development Administration, or Nida Poll.
In the survey to sample public opinion on the government’s “war on scam gangs”, 70.54% of respondents said they totally agreed with the government’s move to cut off electricity, internet and fuel supplies to areas where scammers are believed to operate in Myanmar, 21.07% somewhat agreed, 5.34% somewhat disagreed, and 3.05% totally disagreed.
Asked how much the measures could address the problem of call-centre scam gangs, 60.92% said to a certain extent, 17.71% a lot, 15.95% very little, and 5.42% not at all.
Asked whether they thought some Thai officials were helping the scammers in Myanmar, 69.85% said they definitely were, 26.87% were not sure, and only 3.28% said they were sure no Thai officials were helping the call centre scammers.
Asked which group was bigger – people being duped into working for call centre gangs in Myanmar or those working voluntarily for them – the answers were as follows:
49.77% believed the two groups likely had equal numbers of people
25.80% said most people went voluntarily to Myanmar to work for scammers
20.38% thought most people were deceived by the scammers
4.05% were not sure
The poll was conducted on Feb 10-11 on 1,310 people aged 18 and over of various levels of education and occupations throughout the country.