Govt agencies seek Bt180bn for drought measures

By The Nation

 

Prawit Wongsuwan

 

The Office of National Water Resources will seek a budget of Bt180 billion for implementing projects to tackle or avert drought in the 2020 fiscal year, the chief of the office said.

 

Somkiart Prajamwong, secretary general of the ONWR, said the budget request was presented to Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan during a meeting on Wednesday to consider the measures for coping with drought.

 

Somkiart said government agencies proposed 17,283 projects that would require some Bt173 billion of allocations under the next fiscal year’s budget bill.

 

The ONWR would request Bt180 billion as it would set aside Bt7 billion for a central fund in case of emergency, he said.

 

He said a Bt160 billion budget was initially proposed but nine government agencies sought Bt13 billion more.

 

Somkiart said Prawit also instructed all government agencies to speed up efforts to help the people affected by the ongoing drought.

 

As part of the measures, 4,214 sorties have been flown to seed rains in northeastern provinces between March 1 to August 11, Somkiart added.

 

He said officials are also surveying the drought areas.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30374792

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2019-08-15

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Pathetic. This place is falling to pieces.

53 minutes ago, webfact said:

Govt agencies seek Bt180bn for drought measures

Meanwhile.....in reality.....

 

Edited August 15, 20196 yr by PatOngo

52 minutes ago, CelticBhoy said:

Pathetic. This place is falling to pieces.

Just a little link for you to muse over.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-49263508

 

 

Please stop posting pics of this man ,looking up his nostrils makes me want to hurl...

4 hours ago, webfact said:

proposed 17,283 projects

Clearly not a unified strategic approach to a national water management infrastructure program.

This is just seems a "bits and pieces" approach more driven by political ambitions and not by science.

 

Speaking of science, what happened to the Thai Ministry of Science & Technology plans to use a digital water management system by Cloud Asset that would allow them "to become the central agency supporting Thailand in its water resilience and water security efforts"? Are these 17,000+ projects integrated with such a system (whose cost I have not see published):

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/view/63873    

• Cloud Asset developed a data management platform to ingest and cleanse data from over 40 disparate data sources, originating across various Thai government departments and authorities, and from over 30,000 sensors deployed across the nation. This was supplemented with satellite data from the Japanese Aerospace Authority (JAXA), The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA US), the Thai Navy, and human data pulled from the Internet and social media sources to create a live Unified Situation Picture of the national water at any given moment.
• Cloud Asset’s solution offers artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable near real-time monitoring with prediction and forecast capabilities. The system can provide short and long-term flood and drought probabilities, impact assessments, and aid in disaster and risk-management at a national scale.

 

5 hours ago, webfact said:

The Office of National Water Resources will seek a budget of Bt180 billion for implementing projects to tackle or avert drought in the 2020 fiscal year, the chief of the office said.

Just devalue the baht, and take the money that should be used for stimulus packages instead. The stimulus will come automatic with that measure implemented.

5 hours ago, CelticBhoy said:

Pathetic. This place is falling to pieces.

You might be right. Too dry earth makes big cracks in the ground. I guess we all will have to help keep the planet togheter, right?

I guess we all know what is pathetic.

Stop buying some submarines and you have already some money better to spend

Yet another project that's going to leak like a sieve (sorry for the pun)

regards worgeordie