Vilas Chanpitaksa, a former Bangkok MP, yesterday exposed alleged irregularities in the city administration’s Bt160-million project to buy small fire vehicles.

He also vowed to officially ask the Office of the Auditor-General and the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the project soon out of concern the city administration would buy more such vehicles in the upcoming fiscal year.

“The BMA has paid nearly Bt8 million for each of these small fire vehicles. They are equipped with fire extinguishing equipment, which apparently came at a highly inflated price. A portable fire-extinguishing cylinder is available for about Bt2,800 in the market but is listed at Bt8,000 for the BMA project,” he said.

He suspected that overall, each small fire vehicle might have been three times more expensive than it should have been.

Vilas has now labelled the project as a new episode in a bigger fire-vehicle procurement project that saw a deputy interior minister sentenced to jail in 2013.

“This time, I believe there are many more persons involved,” he said.

According to Vilas, two firms bid for the Bt160-million project – but evidence suggested these two firms might have been related.

“One firm added a new business objective of selling fire-extinguishing equipment in 2013, the year the BMA prepared a budget to procure small fire vehicles,” he pointed out.

He revealed he was now in the process of gathering more information on the links between the two firms.

Vilas said the small fire vehicles bought by the BMA were modified from all-terrain vehicles. Their steering wheels are on the left side, contrary to Thailand’s right-side drive practice.

“Their body is also made of fibre, not steel. Their doors are made of plastic. The drivers won’t be able to see anything in the rear mirrors while behind the wheel,” he said.

According to Vilas, equipment provided for the small fire vehicles comes from about 10 nations. He said the hoses come from Israel; water containers from Austria, fire-extinguishing cylinders from Thailand and the cutters come from Germany.

“They are strange combinations,” he commented.

Vilas said firemen were reluctant to use these small fire vehicles because they had no locked compartments for fire-extinguishing equipment, which was worth more than Bt5 million.

“What if the equipment is stolen?” he said.

He said fire-vehicle drivers had also told him that they would not dare use left-hand-drive small fire vehicles because they were not familiar with such a driving position.

“And usually, fire vehicles must move fast to carry out the urgent mission of putting out fires,” he said.

The chief of the Dusit fire station in Bangkok yesterday said he had heard from other fire stations that these small-fire vehicles could move at a maximum speed of only 40 kilometres an hour.

“Other motorists would honk at us if we moved at such a speed,” he said, “And from my direct experience, there is not enough storage space in the small fire vehicle for all equipment that’s meant to be on it”.