Advice for transparency in water projects: Thailand

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Advice for transparency in water projects
The Nation

A coalition of environmental advocacy groups yesterday demand

BANGKOK: -- Hannarong Yaowalert, president of the Foundation for Integrated Water Management and of the Confederation of Environmental and Natural Resources Conservation NGOs, said the coalition issued the statement in support of the June 27 Central Administrative Court order for the government to hold adequate consultations with the public as mandated by the Constitution.

The Yingluck Shinawatra administration has also given inconsistent information to the public that may have led to confusion.

The statement called on the government to act on eight points:

- Set up a tri-partite committee of representatives from the public, professionals and academics to consult with and listen to the views of the public.

- Hold public hearings to gather feedback on the nine proposed water-management projects in all provinces.

- Hold a separate public hearing for each project and module that is deemed as possibly posing severe risks to the quality of the environment and natural resources.

- Target the forums at people expected to be directly affected by the master plan.

- Publish details on the modules before holding each forum, including the rationale, objective, plans, expected outcome, executing agency or organisation and expected impact on local people and how to deal with adverse effects, along with proposed budgets and sources of funds.

- Adequately announce the hearings through public media, including details of how they will be conducted.

- Allot adequate time to those expected to be affected to air their views during the hearings.

- Adequately publicise the hearing results and use them to improve plans.


-- The Nation 2013-07-25

[NongKhaiKid]

Transparency in Thailand ? Put them together and it's like " military intelligence ", a perfect oxymoron

[Robby nz]

Aw now come on be fair.

How can the Government do all that when they don't know themselves.

All they know is that they have already arranged to borrow the money from 4 Thai banks 2 of them owned by the Government.

[rametindallas]

The statement called on the government to act on eight points:

- Set up a tri-partite committee of representatives from the public, professionals and academics to consult with and listen to the views of the public.

- Hold public hearings to gather feedback on the nine proposed water-management projects in all provinces.

- Hold a separate public hearing for each project and module that is deemed as possibly posing severe risks to the quality of the environment and natural resources.

- Target the forums at people expected to be directly affected by the master plan.

- Publish details on the modules before holding each forum, including the rationale, objective, plans, expected outcome, executing agency or organisation and expected impact on local people and how to deal with adverse effects, along with proposed budgets and sources of funds.

- Adequately announce the hearings through public media, including details of how they will be conducted.

- Allot adequate time to those expected to be affected to air their views during the hearings.

- Adequately publicise the hearing results and use them to improve plans.

All reasonable, thoughtful, responsible requests but too much 'hardship' on the government. These demands are worse than the demands by the BRN in the South from he government's point of view. They are just asking too much.

[mrtoad]

Why would Yingluck want to do this? That would mean there might be some accountability. As it stands, the current way is much better for corruption. Thankyou three times.

[Bagwan]

Transparency on water affairs? All waters in Thailand are murky, particularly the political ones. Then there are the smokescreens to consider.

[chainarong]

Transparency is a word that gets abused in Thailand , much like Democracy, until the country understands the meaning of these words , it's like throwing sh!!t into a fan.

[surangw]

too polluted to be transparent (the water and the plan)

[surangw]

Transparency is a word that gets abused in Thailand , much like Democracy, until the country understands the meaning of these words , it's like throwing sh!!t into a fan.

more likely transparency means the public can see though it and recognize what is really going on.