A proposal to the government to continue solving poverty

Chatrudee Theparat

A proposal to the government to continue solving poverty

The government should continue to strengthen its policy to narrow income disparity and maintain the agency role under the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) to tackle poverty.

Dr Kitti Satjawattana, director of Program Management Unit on Area Based Development (PMU A), said the agency, which is under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, has proposed the government should strengthen its policy to solve poverty because around 4.5-5 million people have stayed under the poverty line.

He said currently there are three poor groups to be classified, including extreme poverty and poverty group caused by their debts. The two groups account for 20% of the total population. Also, there is a group hit by crisis, which makes their income earnings lower. Coupled with the possible impact from unexpected situations like pandemic and economic crisis, it could make their financial earnings worse, putting them to be poorer.

However, NESDC reported the poverty situation was better in 2021, with 4.4 million people, accounting for 6.32% of the total population. The survey was conducted by NESDC’s Thai People Map and Analytics Platform (TPMAP) and a population of 4.4 million living in poverty to be found was based on measurement from Multidimension Poverty Index (MPI Index), which includes health, well-being, revenue, education and assessment to government services.

Dr Kitti also proposed the government to maintain the agency role to handle the poverty problem under the National Economic and Social Development because the agency can work together with related agencies especially Provincial Administrative Administration, which has played an important role to solve poverty problem because the administration can access to insightful information in each village.

“Provincial Administrative Administration should be the major agency to make an integrated operation among various agencies to help tackle poverty effectively, as well as in a collaboration with universities in the area, civil society and community.”

In addition, the government should provide welfares to specific groups, based on information from Practical Poverty Provincial Connext (PPPConnect), and Provincial Poverty Alleviation Platform (PPAP) Platform, which were collected from doing research in the areas. And this kind of information should be adapted to their poverty-solving programs to help the poor effectively.

As of June 2023, PMU A reported that a collaboration between related agencies in solving poverty and using depth research funded by PMU A could solve poverty in 20 provinces as a pilot project. Those in poverty in 20 provinces have stayed in extreme poverty. The operating model could solve 231,021 families or 1.03 million people.