The bodies of the victims – Prathomporn Siriwat and Pratchawat Wasu-anan, both 24 and of Chiang Mai – were taken to Mae Tang Hospital in Mae Tang district.

Wongpan Wongsamut, a chief engineer of the provincial irrigation office said that the accident took place after an explosion at a side tunnel, which is part of the Mae Ngad-Mae Kuang Water-Diverting Tunnel.

He said that both geologists were sent into the tunnel to examine the layers of stone when the loosened rock fell on them at about 7am.

“We are investigating the cause of the accident,” Wongpan said.

The project, at Tambon Mae Horphra, is now sealed pending the probe. It is part of a Bt11.5 billion 23-kilometre tunnel project which is slated to be completed by 2021. Both men were working for an Italian-Thai company on the site.

During a press conference Thursday, a construction expert from the project’s advisory company Noppadol Pianwet explained that there had been a controlled explosion on Tuesday at the section of tunnel where the accident happened and it was supported by cement and bracing equipment.

The two geologists were sent to conduct an inspection for a further tunnel drilling process but a large rock, measuring about three-metres by one-metre, fell on them before smashed on the tunnel floor, he said.

He dismissed speculation that the tunnel collapsed or the rocks fell due to water pressure.

Following the midnight report of the shooting at Krua Yeera Restaurant, police and rescue workers found four injured men at the venue.

The injured men were identified as Phuthanet Cheycha, 33, who sustained a bullet wound on his right ankle and a taser burn to his right eye; Phinit Phulsamran, 50, who was shot in the mouth; Chaimongkol Sangsuk, 49, who was shot in his right wrist and suffered a burn wound near his right eye; and Anant Thongbai, 40, who sustained a gunshot to the chest. All four were rushed to Siriraj Hospital.

Chamanant Sangsuk, 20, told police that he and the four injured men were having a meal and drinks at the restaurant. As the venue’s musicians played music as the restaurant was about to close, the group went on stage to dance and were cheering with other guests when a group of five men seated near the stage, including two uniformed soldiers, attacked the group with a taser and two pistols before fleeing the scene on two motorcycles and in a Toyota sedan.

Chamanant said he suspected that while the men were on the stage, they might accidentally have bumped into the assailants’ table.

Police collected evidence at the scene including fingerprints on glasses that the alleged attackers had held, while examining CCTV footage to determine the suspects’ escape route.

A police source said the alleged attackers might be soldiers who provided security to a businessman and former army officer, adding that police were negotiating the assailants’ surrender.

Following the midnight report of the shooting at Krua Yeera Restaurant, police and rescue workers found four injured men at the venue.

The injured men were identified as Phuthanet Cheycha, 33, who sustained a bullet wound on his right ankle and a taser burn to his right eye; Phinit Phulsamran, 50, who was shot in the mouth; Chaimongkol Sangsuk, 49, who was shot in his right wrist and suffered a burn wound near his right eye; and Anant Thongbai, 40, who sustained a gunshot to the chest. All four were rushed to Siriraj Hospital.

Chamanant Sangsuk, 20, told police that he and the four injured men were having a meal and drinks at the restaurant. As the venue’s musicians played music as the restaurant was about to close, the group went on stage to dance and were cheering with other guests when a group of five men seated near the stage, including two uniformed soldiers, attacked the group with a taser and two pistols before fleeing the scene on two motorcycles and in a Toyota sedan.

Chamanant said he suspected that while the men were on the stage, they might accidentally have bumped into the assailants’ table.

Addressing directors of education from across the country in Bangkok on Tuesday, Theerakiat said that since Thai students joined the PISA test in 2000, their scores have been stagnant and the gap between a high scorer and a low scorer was only 200 points – from a high of 550 points to a low of 350.

He said the country needed to improve the state of thousands of schools that were in the “intensive care unit”.

Informing the directors about the ministry’s educational reform policy and direction, Theerakiat said that teacher development would not be linked to academic standing.

He said the old criteria of promotion based on academic standing, which followed the Performance Agreement, would be scrapped. He said he had looked into the legalities and found no formal requirement for teachers to conduct academic research. Teachers were only required to undergo training to improve their teaching status.

The new criteria would consider a teacher’s work history. A teacher assistant must have at least two years experience, while professional level, senior professional level, expert level and advisory level teachers should have five years. Each level of promotion would require 800 hours of teaching for each year.

For a professional level teacher to be promoted to the senior professional level would require 8,000 teaching hours plus a certificate from a certified training programme for the desired academic standing and a certain amount of Professional Learning Community (PLC) hours.

Each teacher would have their own work achievement file and the school director would ratify the teaching hours they had performed, he said.

An inspection would be conducted randomly. If a teacher fails to accurately record the teaching hours, they would be punished for filing false information by having to start over from zero and face a probe by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, he added.

He said the new criteria would be completed soon. He said there were would a provision for promotions based on academic standing to be awarded under the old criteria too.

Theerakiat said the Bt10-billion budget for teacher development had been spent randomly and he planned to implement a coupon system instead. Each teacher would get a coupon valued at Bt10,000 per year to sign up for a teacher development course that fits their aim of promotion.

As there were only 400,000 teachers nationwide, the coupon system would require Bt4 billion and the remainder would be spent on teacher training.

Representatives from the parties – Mahachon, Phalang Chon, Thai Forest Land Reclamation, People Power Network, Cooperative Power and Thai Rubber – provided comments to the committee on Tuesday and yesterday.

The opinions will be included in the hearing conducted by the committee, overseen by Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, as a process to issue an “agreement of truth” to be endorsed by various blocs in the hope of settling the long-running political crisis.

Pheu Thai, UDD on the roster

Committee Spokesperson Maj-General Kongcheep Tantrawanich said the parties had concluded that reconciliation must be built on engagement by all sectors as well as respect for laws and political mechanisms.

The judicial system and independent agencies, the parties said, must be transparent so they can be scrutinised in line with a checks-and-balances system. The government must also manage natural resources to cope with social inequality efficiently and educate young people to be aware of the threat of corruption, Kongcheep quoted the parties as saying.

He added that the committee had heard comments from 30 parties and was expecting to hear from the rest by the end of the month. Four more minor parties will be heard tomorrow.

The Pheu Thai Party is scheduled to meet the committee next Wednesday, followed by the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) on March 15, he added.

If the recent past is any lesson, the BRN stands ready to discredit any so-called progress made by the two sides – Thai government negotiators and MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation made up of long-standing separatist movements besides the BRN.

For example, just a year ago, when a Thai official leaked to the local press that the two sides had agreed to designate Narathiwat’s Joh I Rong district as a “safety zone”, BRN combatants dispatched about 40 combatants to take over the district hospital and launched an assault on the Paramilitary Ranger camp next door. CCTV cameras captured the group’s movements, which was exactly what it wanted – to send a stern warning to the government and MARA Patani of its capabilities.

Government and MARA Patani lead negotiators came together this past Tuesday to rubber stamp the work of senior officials from both sides who had been working on various technical issues such as the scope, definition, mechanism and framework for formal talks.

The task at this point is to set the stage for formal negotiations that will take place if and when the two sides decide the time is right. For now, they have agreed in principle to bring five districts – one in Pattani, two in Yala and two in Narathiwat – under a “safety zone”. But they have yet to designate the specific districts.

It’s a small step forward and it was done in a way that MARA Patani would not suffer humiliation in the same manner as after the Joh I Rong retaliation.

But the right time to elevate this ongoing dialogue into formal negotiations may not depend on the preparations of the technical team. It has more to do with the BRN’s willingness to come to the table.

Discussion on how to bring the real BRN to the table has been carried out in back channels. But, so far, the BRN has not budged. One of the factions within the Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) led by Samsudine Khan, who is based in Sweden, is taking the same wait-and-see approach.

One month after the Joh I Rong operation, MARA Patani was forced to swallow its pride in April 2016 when Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said he could not formally recognise the umbrella organisation because it was associated with “criminals”.

Some officials say it was Prayut’s way of keeping MARA Patani at bay until the real BRN comes to the table. Others think Prayut realised that it is virtually impossible to reach any sort of formal agreement with the rebels during his time in office and he was not willing to make any meaningful concession because he was concerned about his legacy. He did not want to be remembered as the leader who gave away Patani, they said.

MARA Patani wants the dialogue process it conducts to be official and binding, as well as assurances that its negotiators and technicians will be granted legal immunity. Such demands are understandable in any conflict resolution process.

The rejection only reinforces the belief among BRN leaders that the Thai government side is not willing to make concessions and that coming to the table at this juncture would be a waste of time.

THE SCANDAL-HIT Dhammakaya Temple yesterday blamed the death of an asthma patient inside its vast compound on the ongoing enforcement of a junta order in its hunt for wanted former abbot Phra Dhammachayo.

Phra Sanitwong Wuttiwangso, the temple’s communications director and spokesman, said a woman died of asthma inside the temple at noon because an ambulance could not reach her in time after it was stopped by troops.

The monk said the 48-year-old woman, identified as Pattana Chiangraeng from northern Phayao province, became the second victim after the enforcement of an order issued by the prime minister under Article 44 of the interim charter.

She is among several hundred Dhammakaya followers gathering inside the temple.

On Saturday night, a 65-year-old Dhammakaya sympathiser hanged himself from a telephone signal tower just outside the temple. The man, identified as Anawat Thanacharoennat, protested against the use of Article 44 against the temple and called for its revocation.

The order, declaring Dhammakaya a controlled area for authorities, was issued by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in his capacity as head of the National Council for Peace and Order, to facilitate searches of the vast temple compound for the absconding Dhammachayo. The 72-year-old former abbot is wanted for money laundering and accepting stolen assets in connection with embezzled funds from a credit union.

A stand-off between authorities and the temple’s monks and followers has continued for almost two weeks.

Phra Sanitwong, in his Facebook message yesterday, said the woman ran out of her asthma spray supply shortly before noon and asked for help but the blackout of communication signals inside the temple’s compound made it difficult for people in the temple to call for emergency assistance.

The monk said an ambulance from the private Ratanawej rescue centre could not pass through a road checkpoint manned by military personnel so it asked the government-run 1669 Emergency Medical Service (EMS) centre to send its ambulance. However, the EMS ambulance could not locate the patient as it was allowed to enter the besieged temple through Gate 7 only.

Eventually, the Ratanawej rescuers had to seek permission from officials at Gate 7 to lead the EMS ambulance to the patient. The process took more than an hour. By the time the ambulance arrived at almost 1pm, the woman had already died, the monk said.

A rescue worker in Pathum Thani told The Nation yesterday that a call from the temple in the morning reported a case of asthma. However, an ambulance sent there was not allowed to enter the compound, according to the rescue worker, who requested anonymity. The rescue worker also declined to be specific as to why the ambulance was refused entry. However, authorities yesterday disputed the claim that the ambulance was blocked from entering the temple compound. A medical official from Klong Luang district said the asthma case was reported to authorities at 12.10pm and that they managed to reach the patient at 12.35pm, which was considered normal.

“The ambulance did not get close because it was led by a Dhammakaya nurse,” the official said.

Another tragedy also happened yesterday in the northeastern province of Bueng Kan following a heated argument about the fugitive monk Dhammachayo between two men.

A 30-year-old man identified as Promlikhit Somakarn, who is a resident of Phon Charoen district, was beaten to death with a steel pipe by his neighbour Thanapol Singto, 25, who fled the scene after the attack, police said.

Meanwhile, the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) yesterday summoned three key Dhammakaya followers to report themselves by tomorrow for allegedly obstructing the authorities’ operation and mobilising demonstrators.

The persons summoned are Ai Petchthong, Kotchakorn Chaiwan and Payong Unnahit, DSI spokesman Songsak Raksaksakul said.

In a related development, the superintendent of Pathum Thani’s Klong Luang Police Station, which has jurisdiction covering the Dhammakaya Temple, was removed from his post yesterday. His transfer came after his alleged failure to actively carry out the police part of the operation at the temple.

The order to transfer Police Colonel Kemapat Potipitak was signed by Provincial Police Region 1 commissioner Pol Lt-General Chanthep Sesawet, with immediate effect. Kemapat is now assigned to an inactive post at the Provincial Police Region 1 headquarters.

Under the same order, Pathum Thani’s deputy police chief Pol Colonel Samart Srisiriwiboonchai will double as the caretaker chief of the Klong Luang Police Station.

Also yesterday, a group of Dhammakaya monks had their breakfast on the street in front of the temple after being surrounded by security authorities, claiming that they were forced by authorities to enter the temple through a designated gate.

Sixteen monks exited the temple in the morning for an alms round. On their way back, they wanted to get into the temple through Gates 5 and 6, but they were told by authorities to use only Gate 7 only.

One of the monks said: “When we could not enter the temple via our usual gates, we decided to have breakfast here.”