Bed-ridden Chiang Rai father appeals for public help to keep daughter at school

Fifty-four-year-old Amae Sae-lee, who is partially paralysed following a stroke, lives with his 11-year-old daughter at their small house in Moo 6 village in Tambon Nong Pakor, which is in Chiang Rai’s Doi Luang district.
The Nation visited the father and daughter on Monday morning and found that they are living miserably in a one-room brick-built house, with no windows and a corrugated roof that makes their lives even more difficult as it leaks when it rains.
Amae’s daughter, Kesorn Kantib, is in Grade 4 at the local Ban Mai Pattana School.
Each morning, before the girl goes to school, she does the chores and prepares food for her father.
Kesorn said she had been living just with her father for many years, but when he was left paralysed by a stroke four years ago, it began to cause difficulties for the family as he was the only breadwinner.
She said she now had to collect vegetables to cook for her father and was mostly dependent on alms shared by monks from a local temple.
Sometimes, kind-hearted people from the same village would share some foods with her and her father, she added.
She sometimes also sells vegetables at the local market to earn money for buying food and other necessities for her father, she explained.
She likes going to school because she can have a free lunch there, she said.
The father said he was sorry he could not take care of his daughter and was not sure how long she could continue going to school in their current circumstances.
He has no household registration, so he is not even eligible for a monthly allowance as a disabled person, he added.
However, following the plight of the family being shared among Facebook users in Chiang Rai, Captain Wuthichai Phucharoenyot – commander of a Chiang Rai-based Mekong river-patrol unit – sent some of his troops to fix the house and also donated some money to the family.
The Facebook share also prompted the school management and people in the neighbourhood to visit the family.
Sorayut Ritdee, deputy director of Ban Mai Pattana School, said the school had since coordinated with a former district chief of Doi Luang, who donated a bicycle for Kesorn to ride to and from school.
When he was district chief he also gave some eggs to the family each week, but he has since been transferred.
Kesorn is a good student as she has achieved a grade point average of 4 for all subjects, Sorayut said, adding that the school would try to look for a scholarship for her.