NGO in bid to find jobs for homeless and unemployed
The Mirror Foundation has launched a new campaign to find jobs for homeless and jobless people to earn money for a living.
The foundation is a grassroots Thai non-governmental organisation founded to help urban poor people and locate missing people.
Sittiphol Chuprajong, a representative from the foundation, said most of the homeless are elderly who might have physical problems but still need jobs to make a living.
He said the foundation has been looking after the homeless at Victory Monument and has asked the Ratchathewi district office to find unskilled job positions for short-term work of up to five hours per job.
The district office has supplied cleaning jobs in government buildings. Their first task was at Skywalk Bridge, surrounding the Victory Monument.
He said the foundation has raised funds from the private sector and society for their wages, saying each person who is selected to join the project will be paid 400 baht each day working no more than five hours.
He said the foundation has also contacted other homeless communities nearby the monument to help recruit more people.
Weera Thongrueang, 40, who has lived as homeless for eight years after migrating from Nakhon Sawan province, said he used to be a garbage collector but after he broke his leg he had to rely on food donations.
“This work fits me well,” he said. “It needs just a few skills to make some money to feed myself,” he said.
Mai Kongmaneepan, 66, jobless, said her family has lived in hardship during the coronavirus outbreak crisis and the cleaning work really relieved it.
Currently, 38 people have joined the programme.
Eighty percent of them are homeless, the rest are unemployed.