More than an emergency call: Get to know more about Poh Teck Tung

The Poh Teck Tung Foundation is known for organising rescues, especially for road accidents, and managing unclaimed bodies. It was founded more than a hundred years ago in 1909 and was called Taihonkon. Its initial role was to take care of unclaimed corpses. Now the core value of the foundation is to help people in need regardless of social class, race or religion. 

Its core value is inspired by Tai Hong Kong's teaching. He was a Chinese Mahayana monk during the Sòng period who started helping villagers deal with unclaimed corpses and helping villagers in need.

Sirikul Ophaswongse, director and secretary of the Poh Teck Tung Foundation, said the heart of the foundation consists of three things: helping, healing, and improving lives.

Helping lives. Poh Teck Tung helps lives by receiving emergency calls by phone and through applications. It now has more than 4,000 staff members all over Thailand and abroad. 

These staff have been trained on how to rescue people and deal with public dangers to individuals, the government sector and the private sector. One example is the fireworks warehouse explosion in August 2023 in Narathiwat province. The explosion caused damage to people and property and the foundation spent more than 123 million baht to help 503,289 recipients.

Healing lives. The foundation’s scope of work extends to community-oriented primary care in Bangkok Metropolitan Region and rural areas. It helps get medical equipment to hospitals with shortages, supports patients with low income and kidney-disease patients. 

Hua Chiew Hospital, Hua Chiew traditional Chinese medicine clinic and Hua Chiew therapeutic disease clinic are under the Poh Teck Tung foundation. The foundation has spent about 119 million baht for this scope of work.

Improving lives. Poh Teck Tung has more than 10 programmes for bettering education, careers and quality of life. In 2023, it founded a project called Happiness Sharing Caravan to support the needs of people in the community. 

Together with the government, it attempts to solve poverty. It has a programme for promoting women's careers in conjunction with the Office of Women’s Affairs and Family Development. With the Community Development Department, it aids families with low income. 

And with Huachiew Chalermprakiet University, it has a programme called “Fun with Chinese” teaching youth Chinese for free. In this scope of work, the foundation has spent around 258 million baht to improve lives for 613,653 people.
In 2023, Poh Teck Tung spent around 500 million baht to help, heal and improve lives for Thai people.