Single Mother of Three Loses Utilities, Stripped of Poverty Card

A single mother raising three children alone in an unfinished concrete house has endured four months without electricity and water due to lack of funds to pay bills. She has also been stripped of her poverty assistance card after her phone number was mistakenly linked to a stock trading account.

On July 24, residents of Chao Khram Subdistrict, Prakon Chai District, Buriram Province filed a complaint about a family of four facing severe hardship with utilities cut off for more than four months and loss of poverty card benefits.

Investigation found Ms. Pranee Songchart, 43, living in the unfinished house that belonged to her deceased husband, who died three years ago. She now works daily labor jobs to survive while caring for three children: the eldest in Grade 10, the middle child in Grade 7, and the youngest in kindergarten.

Ms. Pranee explained that she takes odd jobs and supplements income by foraging for bamboo shoots and mushrooms in the forest to trade or sell for rice and school expenses. For the past four months without funds to pay utilities, she uses a single solar-powered light bulb for illumination and bathes her children at the village water tank. Previously she held a poverty card but lost eligibility when her phone number was registered under a stock trading account during the government administration of former Deputy Prime Minister Anutin.

She now struggles to afford even school expenses for her children. When a compassionate teacher occasionally gives her 1,000 baht, she asks her children what they want to eat—when one expressed desire for durian, she bought it and school uniforms until the money ran out. She hopes the government will show compassion for people in desperate situations like hers with no way forward.