FOR THE EXPAT IN ALL OF US! ISSUE 472 30th March 2018
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this is the end
awol kiboshed by thai bureacracy
•You• are reading the last ever AWOL. This is not an early April Fool’s joke. The company this week hua hin
learned that the work permit for it’s Managing Editor will not be renewed, so with that simple decision the newspaper comes to an end as his current permit expires on 3rd April. However we will not leave you without a more detailed description of the farce that has unfolded in this matter - the company is owned by the editor’s Thai wife, and having successfully obtained a work permit in 2010, has had one continuously to date. However in 2016, the Social Insurance department contacted AWOL to inform us that his social insurance payments could no longer be made through the company, because of who owned the company, and instead had to be paid directly by himself. At the time no more was thought of this, until this week when a visit to the Labour Department in Prachuap Kiri Khan revealed that without these social insurance payments being made through the company, the work permit could not be renewed. The Social Insurance office were spoken to, and confirmed that the payments could not be made through the company - Stalemate, and Game, Set and Match to bureaucracy. We are extremely sad to have to bring this news to you, as we have spent nearly ten years producing the only weekly publication in the area. We now have to wind up the company, and try our best to both collect monies owed to us, and refund monies given to us for adverts placed, and we will be in contact with all our advertisers. The last few years have been difficult for us - financially, as advertisers became harder to find, staff wise as we tried and failed to attract staff that could work for us, personally, as our editors’ parents have both passed away in the last 19 months, and finally bureaucratically, as ever changing demands from the authorities have finally buried us. We hope you have enjoyed AWOL, and thank you for reading. Goodbye to you all.