Today, Thailand’s House of Representative held a meeting to discuss several bills and two of which are related to the 20-baht flat fare scheme for the rapid rail system. Those bills are the Common Ticketing System Management Bill and the amendments of the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand (MRTA) Act B.E. 2543 (2000).
During the debate of the bill’s section 35, representatives from the opposition chose to refuse to be present, causing the session to miss the quorum. It took ten minutes for additional government coalition MPs to enter the chamber and continue the session with 248 MPs present.
After the review and debate of the entire 54 sections of the bill, the lower house proceeded to vote in the third hearing, with 384 MPs voted in favour, none opposed, two abstentions, and five representatives did not vote. As a result, the bill was approved and was sent to the Senate. The same goes for the amendments of the MRTA Act as 248 MPs voted in favour, while there were only 151 representatives that opposed and one that did not vote.
The 20-baht flat fare scheme was supposed to launch on October 1, but it was delayed due to the ongoing discussion with the private sector and an uncompleted settlement of some regulations. Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, Mr. Suriya Juangroongruangkit stated that the administration will try to have the scheme become effective by about November 15 if possible. As of now, the consumer can apply for the scheme through the “Tang Rat” application.
