The Lawyers Council of Thailand (LCT) has lodged both civil and criminal lawsuits on behalf of about 12,000 rice farmers demanding the caretaker government pay them rice-pledging money totaling billions of baht.
Affected farmers seeking help from the LCT were divided into three groups, its chairman, Dej-udom Krairit, said yesterday.
The first group are farmers from Phichit who pledged their rice under the government’s rice scheme between 2012 and 2013, he said.
These farmers were facing the most critical situation because they still lack the proper rice-pledging certificates required for claiming money, Mr Dej-udom added.
They cannot claim payment even though the government has the money to pay them, he said.
The LCT lodged both criminal and civil suits on their behalf earlier this week, he said, adding that in the criminal suit, the farmers have accused the government of fraud.
The second group are farmers waiting for rice-pledge payments totalling 300,000 baht to 1 million baht each, Mr Dej-udom said.
This group have rice-pledging certificates which were not properly endorsed by officials, making the certificates useless when it comes to claiming the rice payment, he added.
The third group have the proper rice-pledging certificate but have not yet received payments coming to a total of 10 billion baht, he said.
The largest proportion of farmers represented by the council in these cases came from the Central Plains while the remainder were from provinces in the Northeast and the lower North.
“Four or five hundred thousand baht may not be a huge amount to some. But for these farmers, it’s a lot of money since they have debts to pay. Many won’t have much left after paying off their debts,” Mr Dej-udom said.