About 800,000 landless people are awaiting promised land allotments from government agencies, according to figures compiled by the Agricultural Land Reform Office (Alro) of the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry.
The total was reached by examining the lists of people who have registered for land allocation with the Interior Ministry, Finance Ministry, Social Development and Human Security Ministry, Damrongtham Centres and agricultural land reform offices throughout the country.
Alro secretary-general Sansern Atjutmanas said the list of people awaiting land allotment has been forwarded to the Interior Ministry, which handles secretarial work for the National Land Committee (NLC) chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
The NLC had earlier assigned Alro to compile a data base on the number of landless farmers who have registered to be allocated land with the various state agencies.
The data base also includes the amount of land subject to be taken back from farmers who have refused to enter the land reform process.
Aro's examination of official papers revealed there were more than 10,000 farmers who each occupied more than 500 rai of land under the land reform programme but had refused to join the land reform process. These farmers occupied about 4 million rai of land in total throughout the country.
Alro will ask the NLC to consider ways of taking the land from them.
Mr Sansern said his office plans to allocate a total of 600,000 rai of land to 63,000 farmers in 2016, provided that Alro is able to retake the land as planned.