Sirikanya harshly criticized the screening criteria for the state welfare card, saying it was designed to reduce the number of recipients to fit the budget, resulting in genuinely poor people being left out and forced to appeal on their own.
On 20 July 2026, Ms. Sirikanya Tansakul, deputy leader of the Prachachon Party, spoke about the problems with screening beneficiaries of the state welfare card. She said the government's statements clearly revealed a failure and a chaotic system. The government set a limited budget of 42 billion baht, enough for about 10 million people, which led them to apply overly rigid and fixed criteria to exclude as many people as possible. This caused real hardship for those excluded and shifted the burden onto citizens who must personally file appeals.
Ms. Sirikanya explained that citizens’ hardships are complex, so using rigid criteria—such as owning vehicles beyond a certain limit or having debt over 100,000 baht—to decide eligibility in a pass-or-fail manner is inappropriate. Some people may have low income or assets that cannot be used for work. She proposed that if the government wants to properly screen truly needy people within a limited budget, it should adopt a scoring system instead of an all-or-nothing qualification approach. This would allow more accurate targeting and genuinely help the poor, rather than disqualifying them unfairly.
Regarding the government's plan to move those who fail the state welfare card criteria to the “Thai Chua Thai Plus” program, the deputy leader of the Prachachon Party sees it as a mere consolation prize that was poorly thought out. The program lasts only two months and requires citizens to contribute an additional 40%, reflecting contradictory management. When helping poor people through the welfare card, the government is very stingy, but for “Thai Chua Thai Plus,” it spends a large sum, four times the welfare budget, in a short time without concern, then tries to fix problems afterward.
Concerning the extension of the appeal period until 20 September, Ms. Sirikanya said that while this helps alleviate timing issues, the root cause is inaccurate data from government sources—including the Ministry of Finance, other ministries, and the Non-Formal and Informal Education Office under the Ministry of Education. Unless the government urgently cleans and aligns this data, extending the appeal period will not solve the problem. She called on the government to promptly verify and correct data from all agencies rather than shifting the burden onto citizens to resolve the issues themselves.