Five million Thai people registered to join the second phase of the Government’s 50:50 co-payment economic stimulus scheme within just two hours of its launch at 6am this morning.
Many complaints have been lodged with the Ministry of Finance, however, by applicants who encountered problems while registering online, causing their registration to fail, thus losing their opportunity to benefit from the scheme, initiated by the Finance Ministry to boost consumer spending.
An informed source at the Finance Ministry said today that they have demanded an explanation from the state-run Krung Thai Bank, which has been responsible for the implementation of the scheme since the launch of the first phase a few months ago.
The scheme has proved to be popular among consumers, as well as small retailers such as hawkers and small entrepreneurs. Ten million consumers have joined the scheme.
Each registered applicant will receive 3,000 baht, wired into their “Pao Tang” bank account, to be spent at not more than 150 baht per day in three months. Half of the cost of the spending by consumers will be borne by the tax payer via the Krung Thai Bank.
The cabinet recently agreed to give 3,500 baht to new registrantsin the second phase and add another 500 baht for previousapplicants, in order to boost consumption.
Most of the complaints this morning concern the delay in confirmation of the registration, after the applicants enteredinformation via their smart phones, which was so long that the connection was lost, forcing them to apply again.
The source said that Krung Thai Bank later explained that the problem was not with the computer network handling the applications, but with the mobile phone provider.
The bank said that the phone provider might not have been well enough prepared to cope with such a huge surge in calls at the same time, disrupting the message system.
It was also reported that a number of people, who joined the first phase of the scheme, have complained that they could not use the “Pao Tang” application to activate the online spending.
