Pitakdej, a Democrat MP, visited Nakhon Si Thammarat to hear residents' concerns and urged the government to unlock the State Welfare Card, sarcastically noting that although promises were made to act, in practice nothing has been accomplished.
On 17 July 2026, Mr. Pitakdej Dechdecho, Democrat MP for Nakhon Si Thammarat, met with local residents to hear their hardships. Representatives expressed frustrations about government aid policies, saying that poor and low-income people still find it very difficult to access assistance due to complex screening conditions that do not reflect real-life situations.
Especially, farmers indebted to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) are often disqualified from welfare card benefits because their debts are used as exclusion criteria. In reality, most poor people and farmers have debts, causing them to lose opportunities for relief programs, even though these are separate matters. Furthermore, there remain three major gaps in the State Welfare Card system:
1. Truly poor people, particularly elderly in rural areas without smartphones or internet access, are excluded due to reliance on online systems.
2. Screening criteria are flawed, using debt as a basis, which results in those truly in need being denied benefits.
3. The system is overly complicated; identity verification and appeals processes are difficult, creating inequality between urban and remote residents, where some wealthy individuals receive benefits while truly poor people are left out.
Mr. Pitakdej added that the livelihood and rights of the people are of utmost importance. The government's complicated conditions have become major obstacles causing poor and grassroots farmers to miss out on aid. He will bring these issues to Parliament and urges the government to urgently review and adjust criteria to be flexible and remove barriers, so that budgets and assistance reach those truly in need fairly and comprehensively. He said the government claims to have acted after talking, but in practice, nothing has been done.