DSI to detect corruption in (totally non-populist) cash handouts from outer space

ABOVE: The Department of Special Investigation designed their GPS fraud-busting satellite by images.googling “gps satellite” and Photoshopping their logo onto the first result. It’s flight systems were further enhanced using the same methodology by Coconuts Bangkok. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / DSI / Coconuts Bangkok.

A simple plan to break with the “populist policies” of the past by giving rice farmers cash instead of price guarantees is being exploited before it even begun.

Instead of a complicated scheme to bolster prices using taxpayer money, the junta-appointed government opted to just directly hand them the taxpayer money depending on the size of their land-holdings, a system which has created widespread fudging of the numbers.

Part of a THB365 billion “stimulus” package approved last month, the THB40 billion subsidy would give THB1,000 baht per rai of land up to THB15,000 for 15 rai.

The application process started late last month, and since then farmers have allegedly been rejiggering their land on applications to share any “excess” rai with others to claim under the subsidy plan.

Indeed “some farmers have registered with the government scheme by quoting the number of land lower than they actually have in order to allow others to use the remainder to gain more subsidies,” read a Monday report in state media. “Moreover, some farmers unknowingly mentioned only the 15-rai requirement for the subsidy, causing the remaining amount in their possession to disappear from the official map.”

How will they get the farmers to comply? Why through the vigilance of omniscient, robotic space eyes, of course.

Crimebusters at the Department of Special Investigation have warned would-be cheats that they’ve partnered with the “National Anti-Corruption Directing Center” to scan their farms and eliminate corruption using GPS satellites.

Police Lt. Col. Phong-in Intharakhao of the department’s Bureau of Security Crime said satellites “could precisely indicate the locations of rice plantations and tell whether they match with the number registered with the government.

In case they harbor doubts, Phong-in said a trial use of the system found it was totally effective.

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