Phuket: Bid To Beautify Patong Turns Ugly

[george]

PHUKET DEVELOPMENT:

Bid to beautify Patong turns ugly

Critics blame poor planning, lack of consultation and rushed workload

PHUKET: Hotels in Patong, Phuket's capital of fun, having battled their way through the after-effects of the Bali bombing and the Sars epidemic, are now viewing with despair another deterrent to tourists.

The problem this time is of local origin - a "beautification programme" that has the beach front looking like Sarajevo at the height of the Balkans war.

Tourists trying to get from the beach road onto the beach itself must make their way across a construction site.

Wolfgang Meusburger, general manager of the Holiday Inn Patong, in a letter to Patong Municipality on behalf of other hotels in area, wrote, "We appreciate that the municipality is trying to. . .beautify the beach, but we have a hard time understanding why it has to be done during the high season".

Phadungwong Intong, supervisor of Starbucks in Patong, agreed that the construction has had a significant impact on business, with the number of coffee drinkers down on last year by about 30-40 per cent.

Not everyone is despairing. Mark Chaiyaboon, resident manager of the Patong Beach Hotel, said the project was good, even if it currently disrupts businesses around Patong.

Pointing out that similar projects and arguments had occurred in Pattaya, he said that he believed the long-term outcome would be a big improvement. "I just think that right now everyone is upset because they are tearing up the road," he said, but he conceded that "there might have been a better way of planning it.

"Some places are probably facing a little bit of a downside, but in the long run everything will be a lot better than it is right now."

Novotel Coralia general manager Rodney Trutwein said, "Obviously, doing it in the high season will affect some of the guests that go to Patong beach. But if you do it during the low season you have Asian tourists and you also have the rain and the wind to contend with. So when is a good time?"

Supagorn Meegaew, Patong Municipality engineer supervising the walkway construction, explained that the Patong Beach Coastal Landscape Development, as the project is known, is aimed at making the beach look more pleasant. A 2.5-meter-wide walkway separating the beach from the road should also keep the beach cleaner.

The municipality has been planning the beach beautification project for about two years, he said, but had to wait for funding from the government.

"But when the government finally issued funding we didn't have time to conduct a survey [of local businesses] because we were in a rush to start building." He admitted that, ideally, it would have been better if a survey had been carried out.

The Bt40-million, 3km-long project consists of three parts. The first section of walkway starts where Prachanukhro Road meets Thaweewong Road and extends to Soi Bangla.

The second section starts at the Loma Fountain on Thaweewong Road and ends before Phra Baramee Road. The third section goes a little way into Kalim from Patong.

Supagorn said: "We started building in the low season and it was supposed to be finished by now. But the project was delayed because people said we were building too far out onto the beach. So we had to move back five meters before we could resume construction."

The problem, says Meusburger from the Holiday Inn, is that ground for the entire length of the beach has been ripped up at the same time.

"I've already had three couples leave the hotel. They said, 'We are not coming to a beach where we cannot walk anymore, it's just very unpleasant'," he said, adding that they moved to Karon Beach, a couple of kilometres south of Patong.

Supagorn said the municipal administration was in a rush to complete the walkway before the end of December, so the contractor, Clen Technology, was trying to build the first and second sections at the same time.

But, he added, Clean Technology did not have enough workers, which was slowing down construction and making it doubtful work would be finished on schedule. So far the project is only half-complete.

--The Nation/Phuket Gazette 2003-11-15