Thai Government COVID-19 Communication Failure and the Effect on Students

Cite this article as: Arunrangsiwed, P. (2020). Thai Government COVID-19 Communication Failure and the Effect on Students. Retrieved from https://sw-eden.net/2020/04/08/thailand-covid-19-failure/

During March and April 2020, Thai government caused a big communication failure regarding the Coranavirus or COVID-19. They could not announce anything in the right order. When they announce some new rule or new laws or ask us to do something, they kept canceling the previous announcement. And this confuses so many people and cause thousands of unemployed, and also the material waste.

I am a teacher or you could call me the university lecturer. Right now, everything seems to be okay. I could arrange the class online and let students submit the assignment via Google Drive. However, I would like to tell you something about the time that the government messed up my students’ and my life.

The government would release the press or memorandum for all people in Thailand to follow. My university has to wait for the particular press in order to release one’s own press for the teachers or lecturers to follow. The lecturers need to rearrange to course syllabus to fit the university press or memorandum. That is how they worked. If the government could not make this clear, they would confuse all people. As I am a teacher or university lecturer, my occupation is one of the professionals. I have to keep my face save especially toward my students.

When the government keeps changing their policy or announcement, I also need to tell my students what to do in the least of semester. This way, the government made me like an unreliable teacher, because I had to keep changing what I had told my students. The government broke my face and diminished students’ trust in me.

Moreover, during March 2020, there were so many fake news reports. Most of my students received the information from fake news especially through social network. They believed Facebook posts of people they did not personally know. Is that weird? They believed those people better than the university announcement.

Some said that I am lucky that I got only one complaint from students about the keep-changing. Other teachers who are in the same office told me that they got a lot of complaints from many students. Their students did not just blame the keep-changing things, but they also for crazy about the online classes, due to the lack of internet in their places. Some did not submit the assignment on time, because they did not check their teachers’ social network posts. Many friends of mine got angry with the students who caused them the troubles. Maybe, I should be happy with the only one complaint.

In fact, the government public relations practitioners are those who caused so many problems. Let’s think about students who have to travel to their home. These students need to book the bus or airplane ticket. If the government cannot be clear, they will not be fast enough to get the ticket on time.