Postbag
I live in Pattaya and manage a large apartment complex. Every time there is a long holiday weekend, or during the peak holiday season when the city swells to capacity, there is an insufficient water supply to meet our residents' needs.
We have a two-day reserve storage, but even this is not enough and we are forced to buy water from tanker trucks at 10 times the meter rate. These trucks siphon their water from the same reservoir that is supposed to supply water to the city.
Deputy mayor Verawat Khakhay stated: ''While outright supply shortages are no longer a problem, the actual distribution system remains insufficient to serve every neighbourhood without disruption.'' (Pattaya Mail, Aug 31).
According to the Raimon Land Research Report, there are 28,892 new condominiums coming on the market in Pattaya in the next three years (''Condominium Focus, August 2012'').
So my question is this: How does a new condominium project obtain an approved environmental impact assessment (EIA) certificate to begin construction when it is clear that their additional water demands will have a negative impact on the surrounding community?
YUPHIN KHAMLERT
Pattaya
Sathorn soi disaster zone
I read Saturday's letter from Keep Smiling headed ''Traffic drains patience'' and I must say he or she is a master of understatement, as the situation in Sathorn Soi 1 is just horrendous.
They have taken months already to lay pipes and appear to be nowhere near completion. I walk or drive up and down this soi every day and very rarely do I actually see anyone doing anything. Three lady labourers appear to be the total workforce.
Whoever is in charge of this project did not think it out in a logistical fashion, as it should have been done bit-by-bit and not by trying to do the whole soi at once, as this is just not working.
Even if they completed the ends of the soi first this would have assisted traffic flows. Temporary traffic lights, if the job was being done bit-by-bit, would help the situation, instead of the apparently homemade bamboo sign which they keep moving about at the Soi Ngam Duphli end.
This is in Thai so the many foreigners who reside in Sathorn Soi 1 and Soi Ngam Duphli cannot understand it in any case.
The holes and mud coupled with the dust raised by cars and motor bikes make this a most unpleasant and unhealthy walk and this should not be allowed to happen in an extremely busy soi in the centre of a capital city.
SCOTTIE
Railways a disgrace
A recent report about current infrastructure in Thailand covering finance/banking, education, health services through to roads and transportation stated that the one area that is in clear decline is the State Railway of Thailand's train services.
As someone who has taken in excess of 50 overnight trips per year for the past 25 years, I feel qualified to comment on such findings.
What was once a smoothly operated, punctual and pleasant way to travel has now become a nightmare. Why has there not been any investment in such a basic service?
The trains are poorly maintained, if at all, with locomotives constantly breaking down. The toilets are disgusting, still holes in the floor, and the journeys themselves take anywhere between two-to-five hours longer than scheduled.
If rail maintenance is an excuse (there is now some track replacement being carried out), and a train has to run slowly, then why stubbornly print an arrival time that is impossible to achieve?
This not only inconveniences regular weekend commuters, who can no longer be guaranteed to arrive back at work in Bangkok in time, but also reflects poorly in the eyes of tourists.
On one recent trip, after the air-conditioning, fans and lights were out for the entire 15-hour journey, a foreigner commented out loud that this really did show that Thailand was not a developing, but a third-world country. Who would be proud to hear that?
We keep hearing the SRT runs at a loss. It recently requested approval for a 10% fare hike, saying that there had been none for 25 years (This is untrue. Fares were increased during the first Thaksin government's tenure).
Fortunately, the transport minister denied the request.
The SRT is poorly managed, with simple services being cut and whenever the government of the day proposes a change, the union flexes its muscle and blocks the move.
It is outrageous that the SRT can justify a fare increase, no matter how small, without even the slightest attempt at bringing back some dignity to this most basic of services.
Under King Chulalongkorn, Thailand was the first country in Southeast Asia to develop a railway network. It was real development. What it is now is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the nation.
OFF THE RAILS
No change to poppy
Bernie Hodges in his letter ''A Whole lot of Poppycock'' (Postbag, Nov 10) says that the basic design of the Remembrance Day poppy has been adapted and is now available in Muslim, Jewish and Sikh designs. I think he is slightly in error on this point.
The traditional Flanders poppy design has not been altered and is most common as a button-hole, but a poppy can be obtained attached to a wooden cross, which is the symbol of the Christian faith, and has been available for many years.
Given that many who fought and died were not Christians, the poppy, attached to a simple wooden stake, is also available with the appropriate symbols of those other faiths.
The poppy itself has not been altered and the original process of production by hand is still carried out by disabled former members of Her Majesty's Forces.
MR MAC
Tourism minister unfit
Re: ''Justice for tourists is best damage control'' (Editorial, Nov 11). It is so unbecoming of Thailand's tourism minister to come out and declare that the incident in Krabi, in which a 19-year-old Dutch tourist was assaulted and raped _ in which it took the police a full month to make an arrest; and afterward the alleged culprit was granted bail almost immediately _ could not be considered a rape.
Tourism Minister Chumpol Silapa-archa should be reminded of another case that happened in Chiang Mai in 2000, in which a British tourist, Kirsty Jones, was raped and murdered in a guest house.
The murderer is still at large to this day. What the Thai police said concerning the deceased victim was also along the same lines _ consensual guilt.
Or better yet, take another example of what has just happened in Chiang Mai, in which a Chinese female tourist had her camera snatched from her shoulder in daylight, at a crowded marketplace. Should the tourist be blamed for inducing the robber?
If the tourism situation in our country is what it is today, what good is it to have a tourism minister of this capability?
VINT CHAVALA
Lamphun
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2012/11/12/where-is-the-water/
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