CityNews – Students and many citizens stood in long queues to purchase face masks on Friday 13th March at Chiang Mai University’s co-op following the announcement that the Ministry of Commerce had offered up 1,800 masks. Each pack sold had four masks and were sold for only 10 baht per pack. Only one pack was sold to one person. The sale started at 1pm on Friday and within 15 minutes the stock had run out.
There were two more shops which were provided the same number of masks as the co-op, one was in Patan and the other in Sansai.
Each was sold out within the hour.
In total 8,400 masks have been given to a handful of outlets by the ministry to sell. All have been sold out. All outlets were also told at what price to sell the masks for and warned that there was a penalty of up to five years in jail and or fined 100,000 baht if they were caught selling above the stated price. Citizens are urged to call 1569 to report any vendors selling such necessities at inflated rates.
8,400 masks are not going to stretch very far in a province of over 1.6 million people.