“The organising committee for the Yaowarat’s Chinese New Year celebrations has resolved to not hold any event,” Samphathawong District Office director Yuttana Pamai said yesterday.

Chinese New Year is Saturday.

Normally, Chinese New Year celebrations in Bangkok’s China Town are a big event with dragon and lion dancing and various other performances.

The late monarch passed away on October 13 last year. The government has announced a one-year mourning period for the government sector.

Narathiwat Governor Sittichai Sakda said yesterday that flooding had already hit 470 villages in 13 districts across the province, affecting the lives of more than 145,000 people over the past two months.

For the second time since December, he has declared his province a disaster zone to facilitate the disbursement of emergency funds for relief operations.

In hard-hit areas, floodwaters were still between one and 1.5 metres deep while hundreds of people have sought refuge in evacuation centres.

Heavy rain has caused severe flooding in 12 provinces, mostly in the South, this year.

In the southern province of Pattani, several schools have suspended classes due to flooding. Many others have continued to conduct classes because floodwaters in their areas are not deep and children have been seen leaving heavily-flooded homes in boats to travel to school.

“Some children cannot make it to school. Attendance rates are low at schools that remain open,” said Attasit Rattanaklaew, the acting education chief of Pattani.

In Nakhon Si Thammarat province, residents of all 23 districts have been told to watch out for possible flash floods and landslides.

BMA deputy governor Thaweesak Lertprapan yesterday said the BMA estimated it would have 77,555 people living with HIV – the virus which causes Aids – this year, of whom 59,118 were aware of being HIV-positive. Among this group, 48,269 were already on anti-viral medicine.

Last year, there were 63,471 people living with HIV in Bangkok, of whom 33,605 were aware of the condition.

Bangkok City had 46,939 Aids patients between 1984 and October 2016 – of whom 36,870 are still alive -– with the major contributing factor being unsafe sex (80 per cent), said Thaweesak.

Regarding the number of new HIV/Aids cases in Bangkok from January to October 2016, the districts of Din Daeng and Bang Kapi had the most cases at 38 and 30 respectively.

As previous surveys suggested, many teenagers have sex with boyfriends or girlfriends on Valentine’s Day in an expression of “love”, said Thaweesak. This could lead to pregnancy and risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), he added.

The BMA will launch a “Rak Pen, Rak Plodpai” (know how to love safely) campaign at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in Pathumwan district to raise public awareness about HIV and Aids, STDs, teenage pregnancy and other sexual matters.

The parents of Sonam Tsuboi positively identified him at Siriraj Hospital yesterday, with his girlfriend also present.

They are now arranging his cremation and the return of his remains to Japan.

Sonam’s family and girlfriend do not suspect foul play because a close friend of the deceased said he had developed depression and wanted to spend time alone before his disappearance.

He also told his girlfriend late last |year that he was cancelling a trip they |had planned. The couple intended to |travel to north Thailand on January 7.

Sonam’s girlfriend and family last heard from him on December 27. Concerned, they flew from Japan to Thailand to search for him.

On Sunday, Thai police told them about an unidentified body found floating in the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok on December 30. The body was sent to Siriraj Hospital for an autopsy. There were no signs of injuries but there were two tattoos that matched the description of those on the missing man.

“There are tattoos on the left ankle and the left rib,” Dr Visutr Fongsiripaibul, the forensic-medicine head of the Siriraj Hospital, said.

Bang Kho Laem Police Station superintendent Pol Colonel Anek Paisri said police were checking CCTV footage to determine how Sonam got into the river.

He was responding to allegations being spread on social media.

The witness hearings are scheduled in Nakhon Phanom Provincial Court on February 8-10.

Chakthip also responded to the National Human Right Commission (NHRC)’s remark on Sunday that police should have investigated what went wrong in the case but senior officers had made threatening comments, which made people afraid to tell the truth.

Police were not willing to hear criticism from outsiders, the NHRC said.

Chakthip said police listened to criticism and urged the NHRC to be neutral, not just criticise police.

If the court rules that Jomsap is innocent, police had a plan of action, Chakthip said.

Deputy permanent secretary for the Justice Ministry Pol Colonel Dusadee Arayawuth declined to comment on the case, saying both the police and the minister were separately working on it and would meet soon for discussions.

Jomsap was sentenced to three years and two months in prison for reckless driving causing the death of elderly cyclist Lua Phorbumrung on the night of March 11, 2005, in Nakhon Phanom’s Renu Nakhon district.

She was granted a royal pardon in April 2015 after serving 18 months behind bars.

Jomsap, 54, is seeking a retrial in a bid to be exonerated, after claiming she is innocent.

The provincial court, in line with the order of Appeals Court Region 4, will hold witness hearings to determine if new evidence comprises grounds for a retrial, which the Supreme Court will decide.

Representatives from government agencies spoke to the media at Chulalongkorn University yesterday, saying that flooding problem was normal in the South during this period. But they said better city plans and more “tools” – bigger drains, bypass canals and dams – were needed in each province to stop floods from doing serious damage.

Meteorological Department Central Weather Forecast Division director Surapong Sarapa said that the climate had changed in recent years. Officials had noticed increasingly varied rainfall in the South – 20 per cent, compared to a normal variance of around 10 per cent. That meant more extreme droughts or more regular flooding.

“This is the normal period for flooding in the South, because this is the rainy season down there. But we can see that some places experienced more than 300 millimetres in just one day, which is largely beyond the drainage capacity of the area, so a big flood is inevitable,” Surapong said.

Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department deputy director-general Kobchai Boonyaorana said flood prevention was harder in the South than other parts of the country because of the region’s unique geographical features.

“The southern region is different from other parts of the country, as it is a long peninsula with short waterways carrying water from the mountains down to the sea. Due to this topography, the water will flow fast from the mountain to the cities on the coast and leave us very short time to warn people and prepare for a disaster,” Kobchai said.

While the short distance to the sea may help water drain quicker, it was very hard to drain water to the sea during high tide, which made the flood situation worse.

“In regard to water drainage, we found that narrow bridges, roads and buildings also blocked the water’s passage and intensified the flood situation. Therefore, I suggest that we should reform the city plans to make water drainage easier and solve the flood problem sustainably,” he said.

“This should be done by enlarging bridges to allow greater water flow during flood periods and local officials should strictly regulate city plans to avoid building in waterways.”

Meanwhile, Royal Irrigation Department deputy director-general Narong Leenanon said his department was set up originally to provide irrigation water for farmers – not manage water, so old reservoirs and dams were not built to deal with flood mitigation.

“Our department is working with old irrigation tools to mitigate floods in the South as much as possible. And, it is clear that we need more tools to better manage water, especially new reservoirs to hold water in the mountains and new canals to drain water directly to the sea,” Narong said.

“In the first stage, we will improve the drainage capacity of existing waterways by dredging. Then we plan to build new bypass canals, which have been proven to be a successful method to prevent floods in Hat Yai. And then in the long term, we plan to build new dams in every major southern province for sustainable water management,” he said.

But Chainarong Sretthachau, a lecturer at Maha Sarakham University, said on Facebook that building dams would not resolve the threat of flooding, as the root of the problem was that mountain forests were being destroyed by mining activities.

“The headwater areas of Nakhon Si Thammarat and Surat Thani are full of mines. There are 10 mining concessions in Nakhon Si Thammarat’s Nopphitam district and many more mines on Khao Luang Mountain. These mines not only destroy the forest, which intensifies flash flooding, but damages top soil, which increases the risk of landslides,” Chainarong said.

Meanwhile, the weather bureau warned that Thailand may face another series of droughts this year.

“We face severe flooding in the South and normal precipitation is predicted during this year,” Surapong said. “It is the dry season now in the rest of the country and drought is highly possible in arid areas. This is because there is more water being consumed so we should use water wisely.”