Locals Ready to be Evicted for Chao Phraya Boardwalk, Official Says
By Sasiwan Mokkhasen
Staff Reporter


Bangkok's Chao Phraya river in a 2010 photograph. Photo: rushdi13 / Flickr

BANGKOK — More than half of the residents living along the Chao Phraya River banks the government would like to pave for concrete walkways are ready to move out, an official said yesteroday.

Of 263 households that would need to be demolished for the 7-kilometer promenade, 70 percent are willing to abandon their homes if presented a concrete plan for relocation, Minister of Social Development and Human Security Adul Saengsingkaew said Thursday in Bangkok.

Full story: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1455798384&typecate=06&section=

-- Khaosod English 2016-02-19

So 30% are not willing to move. Isn't that the more important story now?

Now that's an oxymoron: locals ready to be evicted.

Let's face it. Riverside property has more value than most any other places. These people are really just squatters. They didn't buy the land and they aren't paying rent. They starting sleeping there and took over the place. Trashing it over time. The did the same along the train tracks. Willing or not they can and should be forced to move on.

I sympathize with the families some. But not very much because hey! They knew what they did and continued to do and never once thought about the future or something like this happening. The land is not theirs. The gov should retake all of their their land riverside and clean up the river and make it show worthy. If the people are really so poor then how do they have cars or motorcycles or pretty clothes. Let the gov build a housing community them where the property value is low.

Are these the same people who approve of the PM with a rating of 90%?

Clearly Khao Sod has not understood that being evicted is always against your will :-)

So "ready to be evicted" means about as much as "ready to be attacked". Have they been stocking weapons already?

Also, calling 70% "more than half" is definitely true, but ridiculously imprecise. Why use 12 letters for such a vague description when 3 characters are sufficient? Even "over 70%" would be shorter (which is what lazy typists go for).

That said, I'd definitely welcome a walking are next to the river. I wonder if that's include property belonging to some of the 5* hotels as well, or if these are the 30% remaining?

. . . 70 percent (of residents) are willing to abandon their homes if presented with a concrete plan for relocation,

There's a concrete plan all right - seven kilometers of the stuff, to be precise, waiting to be poured. This is good news for the banks and business interests which stand to make a pile from the project. But with nearly a third of residents reluctant to move and no announcement yet of a detailed plan - concrete or otherwise - to relocate the displaced families, the boardwalk development will be a litmus test of the junta's commitment to the interests of ordinary folk as well as those of the financial elite.

Increasingly, the regulatory brakes are being taken off mega projects which boost businesses, create jobs and hopefully eventually benefit the entire community. The downside of this fast-track policy, and a concurrent much stricter application of by-laws, rules and regulations blind-eyed by successive governments, is the ongoing eviction of thousands of poorly educated and largely unqualified mini-entrepreneurs from their traditional habitats.

Historically, in the absence of a welfare state, successive generations of Thais have created squatter communities beside rivers and canals, erecting primitive and often unsanitary homes and businesses along railway tracks or on patches national forest. They are the hawkers selling food, trinkets or whatever they can they can on city pavements, at rural roadsides, on public beaches - almost anywhere else offering a few square meters of space, somehow eking out a precarious living for themselves and their families.

The government's decision to tighten the screw on these long-tolerated legions of illicit vendors has coincided with a law and order clamp-downs on massage parlours and other popular "entertainment" venues in red light districts across Bangkok and other major tourist centres. This will have a devastating effect, in particular, on sex workers from impoverished Northern provinces and the extended families for whom they are often the sole breadwinner.

Another drawback of this ongoing legal/moral purge is the impact it must be having on the thriving so-called "black economy" - which, despite having fallen substantially as a proportion of national income in the last decade or so, is estimated to account for up to half of the Kingdom's total GDP.

It is a laudable ambition for any government to want to clean up Thailand's dubious image as a haven for sex tourists, and in the long run the proposed transition to international family holiday destination may well attract more desirable, well-heeled tourists and a boost to the economy. But what, in the meantime, of the Thais whose homes and livelihoods risk being destroyed by this bold piece of social engineering?

As well as rehousing families evicted to make way for mega infrastructure projects such as road schemes, new power stations and the Bangkok boardwalk,Thailand's political movers and shakers need urgently to come up with a programme to provide new jobs and training. Otherwise, the march of progress is going to leave an awful lot of people stranded the wayside.

Edited February 19, 201610 yr by Krataiboy

if they don't actually own the land what's the fuss?

Let's face it. Riverside property has more value than most any other places. These people are really just squatters. They didn't buy the land and they aren't paying rent. They starting sleeping there and took over the place. Trashing it over time. The did the same along the train tracks. Willing or not they can and should be forced to move on.

I sympathize with the families some. But not very much because hey! They knew what they did and continued to do and never once thought about the future or something like this happening. The land is not theirs. The gov should retake all of their their land riverside and clean up the river and make it show worthy. If the people are really so poor then how do they have cars or motorcycles or pretty clothes. Let the gov build a housing community them where the property value is low.

Let's face it. Riverside property has more value than most any other places.

You are right about the value.

So, let's face it, there is a completely selfish reason hidden somewhere which will be certain to benefit the 'good people'.

So they wont be singing ! Under the boardwalk ! anytime soon.

Adverse Possession

A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by law. Also known as Squatter's Rights. since Thai law is based on US law, there's a good chance that Adverse Possession applies here.

What the govt is using is the right of "imminent domain". Usually, this is used to put through a highway or airport, not to make a tourist walkway. However, it could be argued that the riverside belongs to the public, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a meter of public riverside space along the Chao Praya.

Adverse Possession

A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by law. Also known as Squatter's Rights. since Thai law is based on US law, there's a good chance that Adverse Possession applies here.

What the govt is using is the right of "imminent domain". Usually, this is used to put through a highway or airport, not to make a tourist walkway. However, it could be argued that the riverside belongs to the public, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a meter of public riverside space along the Chao Praya.

' Imminent domain' ? Spellcheck is your friend, your Eminence.

Adverse Possession

A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by law. Also known as Squatter's Rights. since Thai law is based on US law, there's a good chance that Adverse Possession applies here.

What the govt is using is the right of "imminent domain". Usually, this is used to put through a highway or airport, not to make a tourist walkway. However, it could be argued that the riverside belongs to the public, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a meter of public riverside space along the Chao Praya.

' Imminent domain' ? Spellcheck is your friend, your Eminence.

Apparently, not, since it didn't catch my typo, but luckily I have you on hand ready with a snarky reply.

So no one is ready to be evicted. Just some people said that they would move if presented with a plan they agreed with.