Pattaya officials have been good at signing agreements to solve the city’s homeless problem and very bad in actually doing it.
Yet another “memorandum of understanding” will be signed later this month to establish a “protection system” for people living on the street. It follows one signed in August last year.
Unlike last year’s pact with the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and Chonburi Protection Center tor the Destitute, the new paperwork includes signatures from the Chonburi Home for Children and Family, Thai Health Promotion Foundation, Burapha University, Institute of Asian Studies Chulalongkorn University, Banglamung Hospital as well as tourist and immigration police.
The agreement is aimed at setting guidelines on how to handle homeless people once they’re picked up by city or law-enforcement officials.
The ministry last year started cooperative programs with 29 municipalities to support social-welfare management to provide care and rehabilitation. But the MOU signed then resulted in no improvement in Pattaya’s homeless situation.
As before, the new government document promises to get homeless people off the street, provide care and social services and get them working and housed again.
Pattaya Deputy Mayor Wuthisak Rermkijakarn said people living on the streets cannot be arrested and only asked where they would like to be relocated, whether it be with relatives or a shelter. But they can also refuse help and are simply asked to move elsewhere.
He said the only legal jurisdiction public officials have are over vagrants in the country illegally or outwardly showing signs of mental illness.
