Welfare Card: Thai minimums receive an education
Thai people living below the poverty line receive a welfare card from the government. The card entitles you to purchase discounted items in Thong Fah Ratcha Rat shops, transport by train and bus and the purchase of butane gas. An amount is credited to the card every month. The second phase is that holders of the card can sign up for education/training in order to increase their chances of (better-paid) work.
Over the past four months, 11,94 billion baht has been spent on subsidies. more than 11,4 million minima have registered for the card. 1,58 million people have registered for the second phase, consisting of training/education. The participants receive 100 to 200 baht extra. The Fiscal Policy Office expects a total of 5,3 million people to enroll. Registration is possible until the end of the month.
The government has allocated 35,67 billion baht for 34 projects. Private companies that provide training or employ minimum wage earners receive a tax benefit.
Source: Bangkok Post
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Known as Khun Peter (62), lives alternately in Apeldoorn and Pattaya. In a relationship with Kanchana for 14 years. Not yet retired, have my own company, something with insurance. Crazy about animals, especially dogs and music.
Enough hobbies, but unfortunately little time: writing for Thailandblog, fitness, health and nutrition, shooting sports, chatting with friends and some other oddities.
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11 million people therefore earn less than 3.000 baht per month. How is it possible that everyone in Isaan drives around in expensive SUVs? (sarcasm)
About that card:
1 can only be spent in the Thong Fah (meaning 'Golden Heaven') shops. There aren't many of those. In rural areas, many people have to travel 100-200 kilometers to such a store.
2 people complain that those shops only have products in very small packaging, that they are a few baht more expensive than in the shop around the corner, that certain things are often just gone. So it looks more like a dump for superfluous products
3 If you do not use the money on the card, everything will be debited at the end of the month. You can't save for a few months
4 if you do not need the money for travel (500-1500 baht per month), for example, you cannot use it for anything else.
Why don't those people just give 1000-2000 baht per month what they can spend as they see fit?
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/politics/2017/10/24/new-welfare-cards-boost-rich-poor/
What nonsense you speak again, Tino. In "Thong Fah," "thong" is high-pitched, and that's also "heaven."
It's not low-pitched thong, that's gold.
'Thong Fah' simply means 'heaven, firmament, firmament'. Sorry.
Just kidding.
ท้อง 'thong' with a high pitch means 'heaven' but also 'pregnancy'.
So if you ask your girlfriend 'Do you want gold'? but you mistakenly pronounce 'thong' in a high tone instead of a low tone, so you ask 'Do you want to get pregnant?' Dealing with Thai women is full of pitfalls and traps. Don't start 🙂
I hope everyone is asleep now because I am once again correcting a mistake. It's that phonetics. Thong can also be ธง and that's it in this case. ธง or thong means flag. Same pronunciation but different spelling. Sigh……Thong Fah is 'Heaven's Flag' or something like that.
Simply “blue flag”, stores with a blue flag are in the system of the wellfare card.
That's it, thank you.
Do you have examples of areas where people have to travel 100-200 km?
Ger Korat,
All those shops are listed on the website below, per province and municipality, and I must say that there are quite a few. I looked at Chiang Rai and there are only a few (mountain) areas where the distance is 100 km. So that's not too bad. I took my opinion from an earlier review of these shops…..I retract that 'many people'….
http://www.shop.moc.go.th/#LMap
That own insight is in most cases whisky
I think this is another remark heavy under the belt, Mr Pompui.
As if every poor person only thinks about that - drinking alcohol.
With apologies, really worthless.
Well, the disadvantages of the wellfare card have been discussed before on the blog (see the tags in this blog). A cash compensation, say some kind of Assistance, of 1000+ baht or something like that would of course be much more practical. Can one spend it yourself on food, medicine or what is needed.
For example, research director Somchai Jitsuchon argues that cash would work better. That's just basic economics: giving cash works better than giving things. If only because then one does not have to go all the way to such a special store. Why that didn't happen? Higher up the tree there is resistance to the idea of handing out money: what if those people stop working? Buy liquor or tobacco? And apparently the rich know better what is good for the poor than the poor themselves… paternalism at its best.
See: https://tdri.or.th/en/2017/11/suggestions-for-poverty-reduction/
All well and good that contribution, but all the money flows back to the chino Thai with this and as a result much less income for the small shops in the village
MVG
Ronny
My girlfriend owns a convenience store. Last year, people from the ministry came by to ask if she would accept the welfare card. Which she didn't, too many conditions. And so there is not a single neighborhood shop prepared here in the region.
So it depends on that, not because it is consciously ruled out.
Now you have made me curious about the conditions that were/will be set to be a ธงฟ้า (thong fa = blue flag) shop. Can you still share those conditions with me/us?
I am told here that thong/flag is with an oo sound, and thong/gold with an or sound..
Not the same..
There is some difference in the sound but the main difference is the length of it. The -o- in thong, flag, is very short as in bonbon and the -o- in thong, gold, pregnant or sky, is much longer, longer than the -oo- in drill.