Thai Widow’s Plea for Help in Face of Loan Sharks

The recent suicide of a 60 year old woman’s husband due to mounting debt led her to plead for assistance to deal with aggressive loan sharks. The woman, known as Yay Yuphin, from Uthai Thani province, sought help from Ekaphop Luangprasert and his team from the Saimai Must Survive news page, following her husband’s death.

The man had committed suicide to give his wife his funeral money to cover some of the family’s informal loans, which required daily interest payments of 3,000 baht.

Yuphin and her husband, who sold shallots and garlic for a living, had been supporting themselves and their two granddaughters, aged 17 and five. Before the Covid crisis, Yay managed to make ends meet through her trade but the pandemic had left her business in ruins.

This forced her to resort to both formal and informal loans to keep her business afloat, which ultimately led her…