BMA to Send SMS for Flood Home Inspections Starting Oct 22

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is preparing to send SMS messages to schedule home inspections for flood victims, aiming to prevent fraud and false damage claims. Field inspections will begin on October 22-23.

On October 20, Deputy Governor Tavida Kamolvej gave an interview on the progress of reviewing compensation requests for flood victims in Bangkok. Ms. Tavida stated that approximately 1 million citizens have submitted requests through the government application. The BMA has reviewed and approved about 40% of all requests and expects to accelerate progress to 70-80% within the next week.

Verifying requests in Bangkok is complex due to diverse housing types, including condominiums, flats, rental rooms, sublets, houses in allocated housing estates, and cases where a single address has multiple separate buildings. Each case must be verified individually for both eligibility and actual damage. Some cases require additional documents or on-site inspections, so decisions cannot be based on submitted data alone.

There are also cases where reported damage does not match reality, with applicants or residency certifiers misunderstanding the criteria — for example, building managers signing on behalf of property owners. If errors are unintentional, citizens can submit additional evidence and request reconsideration through the BMA's appeal process, where officials will review based on facts and evidence.

For requests requiring on-site damage assessment, the BMA will expedite the process by developing an appointment system to notify applicants in advance via SMS to the phone numbers registered in the claim.bangkok.go.th system. This will inform them of the inspection schedule so they can plan to be present. Appointments and field visits are expected to begin on October 22-23 onward.