Students head to pawnshops for their tuition fees
With the new school semester due to begin next week, college students are currently among the top-five customers of government-owned pawnshops - in need of emergency funds for tuition fees.
The first five types of customers, discovered from registration details, are company employees, housewives, civil servants - followed by college students, who made the top five for the first time. Social Development and Human Security Minister, Paiboon Wattana-siritham cited a statistical report, which said some 1,075,417 people had used the service at 33 state-owned pawnshops last year and some 960,354 in 2005.This year, some 78,627 people had used state pawnshops, as of April.Officials estimated that the likely of customers this year would total 1,157,000, Paiboon said. So far, the government had put around Bt600 million into state-run pawnshops and another Bt900 million would be soon approved. Paiboon said the pawnshops' interest rates may be reduced even further to help low-income earners over the next three months, especially for loans lower than Bt3,000. The Nation
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