The government’s plan to offer stickers on popular mobile-messaging app Line to promote its 12 “core values” for Thais has critics coming unstuck over its 7 million baht price tag.
The Tourist Police was just one of several Thai agencies to develop stickers for mobile-messaging app Line.
The Information and Communication Technology Ministry announced on its website Dec 12 it would begin accepting bids to develop the cartoons. The median price was set at 7,117,353.24 baht, just 50 baht under its allocated budget of 7,117,400 baht. The median price was based on a proposal by Line Co (Thailand) Ltd.
The ministry's deputy permanent secretary, Songporn Komolsuradej, said the production of Line stickers followed a policy of the National Council for Peace and Order to offer the stickers as a New Year's gift to the people.
The ministry plans to offer free downloads of the stickers on Dec 30.
The median price announcement has been widely circulated on social media on Wednesday. Many netizens viewed that the price of creating Line stickers too high and suggested the government spend the money on more worthy projects.
A comment on Sanook.com by user "Kram Khong Prathet" said "Does the government think that how those who do not have a mobile phone or those who do not use Line will benefit from this way of spending?"
According to Line Thailand, the company has offered packages of stickers to advertisers to create messages and send photos to their customers, as well as a premium package for users to chat with advertisers. The application package costs about 2-4 million baht on average.
A telecommunication company spent around three million baht to have a set of stickers that will last for three months after downloading.
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission in August opened bidding for companies to develop a Line-based complaint system and public relations arm, setting aside 10 million baht for the project. But the NBTC on Sept 8 announced a delay for the bidding so it could review the terms of the project after it received negative feedback.
Line reported 29 million users in Thailand as of Aug 31. Globally it had 490 million. The company expects to reach 30 million users in Thailand this year, up from 18 million in 2013.
