Governors of five southern border provinces have been ordered by the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC) to investigate if there are any irregularities in the disbursement of money for destitute people.
The order followed a recent discovery that unscrupulous officials at a centre for the protection of the destitutes in Yala’s Kabang district had used the names of 18 “bundit arsa” volunteer graduates to claim fund, amounting to 2,000 baht per head from the centre to hire them to work.
It turned out that the volunteer graduates were given between 500-1,000 baht each instead of 2,000 baht they were supposed to be given.
In Songkhla province, Mr Samran Buapeng, a kidney patient in Ranot district, who was placed under the care of Her Majesty the Queen of the Late King Bhumibol, told Thai PBS reporter that he had never received the 2,000 baht allowance from the centre in Songkhla although his name appeared in the list of the recipients.
Instead, he regularly received financial support from the Thai Red Cross, but never from the Songkhla centre for the distitutes, adding that he was totally unaware of the fact that his name was among a list of the recipients from the centre.