Government initiated projects in Thailand

Past and present efforts by the Royal Thai Government (RTG) to initiate projects to help the unemployed in Thailand.

Having been living in Thailand on and off for more than 13 years, I have often wondered about the amount of government initiated projects that are, or have been, offered and paid for by the RTG? In most countries, especially during periods of economic decline, projects are proposed and financed by central government in an attempt to reduce the number of unemployed, and to see that job opportunities are made available to those who want or need them.

For example, when I was a youngster growing up in London, there were schemes like the Young Trainee Scheme (YTS) where young unemployed school leavers and the general unemployed could get technical skills to enable them to have a better chance of finding paid employment. Such skills included basic welding, mechanics, bricklaying, indeed the full range of vocational as well as manual labour type jobs. I have been surprised to find that few if any of these kinds of programs appear to exist in Thailand, or if they do, they are not all that well publicized.

English for Interviews

One program, however, that I remember well and which was initiated by the first Thaksin government was a program conducted by the Go International program via the Continuing Education Centre of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. It was called "English for Interviews' and, if my memory serves me well, was a program that lasted for about six months. At one point I even remember that Thaksin's own son Pangthongtae attended, although I was spared the responsibility of having to teach him myself. The main focus of the program was to get unemployed graduates from Chulalongkorn University (and maybe Thammasat University) back to work.

To be honest, given that the courses consisted mainly of Business English, I am not entirely sure how much use they were to Thai students who would, in the vast majority of cases, have been interviewed by Thai managers and administrators in Thai. However, by all accounts the program was considered a huge success, and many Thai students graduated from the program with some degree of advanced knowledge in things like how to answer interview questions well in English, how to prepare for an interview, what to say in answer to tricky questions, what questions to ask, how to prepare CVs, and covering letters, and so on.

From a teacher's point of view, the work was great as you were guaranteed six months work, at 30 contact hours per week and paid at 800 baht an hour which was a decent sum in those days! If you did well on those courses, you were also offered more work in the corporate section of Go International which I believe is still alive and kicking to this day.

New government initiative

I mention this program now because I have recently heard that another perhaps similar program is about to be announced in the coming weeks as our most esteemed website owner, Phil, recently announced the following information on his home page: "Chatting to one of our regular ajarn contributors this week, he had it on good authority that there is to be a new government initiative that could create literally thousands of jobs for foreign English teachers in Thailand. We'll try and bring you more news on that as and when we get it, but it would certainly be a major boost for foreign teachers in Thailand. Things haven't been easy over the past couple of years. This would be very welcome news indeed."

Given how quiet the EFL sector is at the moment, we can only hope that the contract is extensive, the hours long, the pay great, and the possibility of more permanent work emerges on the horizon. Watch this space as they say!