Thaksin Slams Agency Over Poor Spelling

Thaksin slams agency over poor spelling

BANGKOK: The administration's embarrassment over disastrous proof-reading mistakes in two bills passed by Parliament did not hold the prime minister back from criticising a state agency yesterday for allowing spelling errors to appear on the back cover of student notebooks.

He brought with him to the weekly Cabinet meeting copies of soft- and hard-cover notebooks produced by the Kurusapa Business Organisation and showed the ministers errors that he said nobody had cared to correct.

The back covers of the notebooks feature mathematics and measurement formulas. Thaksin pointed out that some of the information was outdated, such as the name of the Indonesian currency and the use of franc in place of euro.

In addition, the Thai spelling of dollar uses Nor Nu (N) instead of Lor Ling (L).

"The prime minister said the Kurusapa Business Organisation must correct the mistakes immediately," said Deputy Education Minister Sirikorn Maneerin.

The Thaksin government is still red-faced from what the prime minister described as "technical errors" in two education bills. One of them was returned by HM the King in an unprecedented royal rejection of a piece of Parliament-passed legislation. The other was passed by Parliament, but is in limbo because mistakes were discovered later.

--The Nation 2003-12-24