Over 3 million state welfare smartcards have been distributed to recipients, mainly the disabled, the elderly and bedridden patients, who registered in the added round for the state-sponsored subsidy and welfare scheme for low-income earners.
As of May, 3.04 million out of the 3.14 million additional recipients who signed up for state aid in a follow-up round had received the welfare smartcards and the rest must get the cards by Dec 20 to avoid losing their benefits, said Yanee Sangsrichun, an adviser to the Comptroller-General's Department.
It takes two days after receiving a welfare smartcard for the activation process, designed to prevent others from using the card.
The number of welfare smartcard holders will reach 14.5 million in total after the 3.14 million additional recipients are included, Mrs Yanee said.
The government opened an additional registration period during May to June last year for qualified individuals who failed to sign up for state assistance in 2017, almost all of whom were disabled, elderly or bedridden patients.
The welfare smartcard holders must be unemployed or have had an income of 100,000 baht or less in the past year to receive aid under the programme. In addition, applicants' savings, savings certificates and bond holdings must be worth less than 100,000 baht combined. If applicants own property, the area must not exceed 35 square metres for a condo unit, 25 square wah for a townhouse or 10 rai for agricultural purposes.
Applicants must be Thais aged 18 and over.
State welfare smartcard holders are entitled to 200-300 baht a month to buy consumer products at Thong Fah Pracha Rat shops; a 500-baht-a-month fare subsidy each for public buses, intra-provincial buses and electric trains; and a 45-baht discount for cooking gas purchases every three months.
Spending on the state welfare smartcard scheme averages about 4 billion baht a month.
According to the Comptroller-General's Department, card spending amounted to 76.8 billion baht, of which 55.3 billion was used to purchase staple goods at Thong Fah Pracha Rat shops, between the start of smartcard distribution on Oct 1, 2017 and Feb 28, 2019.
The Fiscal Policy Office recently estimated that the number of recipients would be less than 10 million after replacing the individual income-based criteria with a family-based benchmark to better direct aid to those in need.