Thailand may ease guide law

BANGKOK Thailand’s Department of Tourism will ask Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha to approve a plan to allow foreigners to work as tour guides by calling them “tourism coordinators”.
It will get around the problem that tour guiding is a career reserved only for Thai citizens. However, very few Thais believe it offers a meaningful career path and this has led to a shortage of qualified guides especially with competency in languages other than English.
The department’s deputy general director, Promchote Traiwej, said a proposal will be submitted to the prime minister, next week, in the hope that the scheme will help to crackdown on illegal foreign tour guides.
“Illegal foreign tour guides will be allowed to register at Thai embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if the plan is approved. Those who register will be able to work as a tourism coordinators for registered tour companies.”
inside no 3He added: “The plan is expected to bring illegal foreign tour guides into the legal system. They will pay tax, and act as consultants to Thai tour guides.”
It is the result of discussions between the Department of Tourism with Ministry of Labour’s Department of Employment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior, and Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to find ways to resolve the problem of illegal foreign tour guides.
“We have to admit that there are foreigners who visit Thailand claiming to be tourists and then they work as tour guides… this is a chronic problem impacting on the kingdom’s tourism industry that has to be resolved urgently,” he said.
“Illegal tour guides take over jobs depriving Thais of work, but they are more fluent in international languages or they are native speakers…if we can bring them into the system, they can help Thai tour guides improve their skills.”
In addition, the tourism department will establish a committee to evaluate tour guide language skills and create a system that sends tour guide to workshops overseas to help them improve language skills. South Korea was identified as a priority for the scheme.
Tourism and Sports Minister, Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, said the Prime Minster has focused on the illegal aspects and poor quality of tour guides, while the ministry hopes to address the lack of language skills that could be improved by having a one-hour conversation class with a foreigner every day.
Rules governing the tour guide register may also be eased to attract those who have strong communication skills.
Currently, there are around 56,000 tour guides in the system but only 32,000 tour guides are registered at the tourism department. There is a shortage of Korean, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Bahasa Melayu, Norwegian, German, French, and Spanish tour guides.
Thailand’s major challenge as its approaches the ASEAN Economic Community era is to improve language skills. There is a general apathy towards foreign language skills and an aversion to learning a second language. Despite decades of teaching foreign languages at schools from secondary level to university, there has not been a discernible improvement that would allow Thailand’s labour force to compete with Singapore or the Philippines after AEC commences.

sourced:ttrweekly.com