BANGKOK – It has been reported that a 38-year-old single mother committed suicide with her 7-year-old daughter in a house in Chanthaburi province. The tragic incident occurred before Srettha Thavisin, Prime Minister and Finance Minister, announced the plan to solve the loan shark problem and declared that it was a “national agenda” on November 28, 2023.
In a suicide note, she wrote that no one understood the pain of having no money and no relatives to sympathize with her. She had been starving for 3 days and was still in debt. She wanted her daughter to go with her.
Her 72-year-old father said his daughter was a beverage vendor at the market near a supermarket in Chanthaburi province. She divorced her former husband when her daughter was young. She had borrowed about 50,000 baht from an acquaintance and was stressed about it.
Many Thai citizens are suffering from debt, which has led to several cases of suicide. On November 28, Srettha mentioned that the government would put this long-standing problem on the national agenda.
“For me, the loan shark is modern world slavery. This is the ‘new world slavery’ that robs people of their freedom and their dreams. This problem is too big to solve without the government as a middleman. We need to work with many sectors today: government officials, the police and the Ministry of Finance to prevent people from falling into the same snare again.”
Srettha emphasized that the government, as mediator, will negotiate fairly with all parties involved. The government will take care from the beginning of the unfair contact to the unfair interest rate and any violence involved.
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