Huai Kwan superintendent Colonel Kampol Rattanapratheep revealed on Tuesday that undercover police had conducted a sting operation by contacting a secret Line chat group to pay Bt15,000 for sex with a 16-year-old girl.

It resulted in the girl being removed for the service and the arrest of former nude model Alisa Jaidee, 32.

Alisa allegedly acted as the girl’s madam and received an Bt8,000 commission and gave Bt7,000 to the girl.

Kampol said the prostitution of girls aged under 18 is a human trafficking crime, so Huai Kwan police could charge Alisa with the crime without having to wait for the Anti-Human Trafficking Division to act

Alisa has also been charged with procuring a girl aged under 18 for a sex service and promoting an underage girl’s lewd act for payment or other benefits.

Waritha Doundsungnoen, 50, who was among 20 residents of the Saeng Tawan Housing Estate in Bang Sao Thong district who had to flee their homes in the middle of night, said her family’s sleep was interrupted by what sounded “like rats running around the ceiling”, followed by loud cracking and the whole house shaking.

“We ran outside and saw that our neighbours were doing the same,” she said.

Once the din subsided, they went back inside to investigate and realised that their houses had tilted backwards and had cracks running through the infrastructure.

Waritha said she bought her house 12 years ago and had never before had subsidence problems. One other house in the neighbourhood did suffer slight subsidence previously and was being repaired, she said.

“My family members and our neighbours have been adversely affected and we need help and shelter,” she said, urging authorities to provide aid.

Disaster prevention and mitigation officials in Tambon Bang Sao Thong assessed the damage on Tuesday morning and summoned inspectors and aid agencies.

The neighbourhood was sealed off to safeguard against injury in the event any buildings collapse.

Titus and other authority officials met Prayut prior to Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting to promote para-rubber products and related innovations under the theme “Rubber for Modern Living”.

Prayut viewed a display of products including a mask used as protection against harmful chemicals that cost Bt15,000 to make – Bt10,000 less than an imported equivalent.

He was also shown a para-rubber “slash-guard” handbag able to repel pickpockets’ knives.

The premier instructed the Agriculture Ministry to make a list of state agencies’ uses of rubber so that a budget can be allocated to help manufacturers meet domestic demand and promote the use of para-rubber across the country.

Prayut said the government would resolve the problem of sagging rubber prices and seek the cooperation of other countries. He said the Commerce Ministry was trying to get China to use more Thai rubber.

“This is why Thailand must be friendly with all countries, such as China, which has ordered a lot of rubber from Thailand,” Prayut said. “Everything is regarded in terms of reciprocal moves that bring mutual benefit.”

The premier said the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry must meanwhile halt land-encroachment problems linked to rubber plantations and the Agriculture Ministry must encourage farmers to switch from rubber to alternative crops such as fruit.

Iklas Bin-mahama, 23, who’d been shot at least twice, was pronounced dead at Pattani Hospital.

Soon after the 9pm attack, police officers including forensics investigators and a bomb squad were scouring the scene in Tambon Don Rak.

They found the victim’s white sedan with the driver’s side window shattered, bloodstains and 10 spent ammunition cartridges.

Police determined that Iklas, formerly attached to the 46th Ranger Task Force in Narathiwat, had just returned home from that province and was talking with a neighbour, while his wife, a nurse, was inside their apartment.

She’d been living there almost a year. Iklas had only just moved in two months earlier.

The gunmen arrived and blocked the entrance to the residential compound and two of them shot Iklas as the neighbour fled.

The attackers burst into the apartment to demand his car keys and ransacked the room and the vehicle before fleeing.

Police are trying to determine whether the murder stemmed from a personal conflict or was related to the insurrection in the South.

Captain Suwit Kaewpreecha, deputy inspector of Ao Luek Police Station in Krabi, was alerted to the massacre at about 1.30am.

The slain victims included three girls, while two other girls were severely injured.

Local residents said they heard gunfire at around midnight on Monday at the house of Worayuth Sunglung, the village head.

Initially, five were killed at the scene and three others, including Woratyuth, died at a hospital.

The other slain victims were identified as Duangporn Sunglung, Suriya Sunglung, Sutthipong Prikdam, Phetdao Sunglung, Anna Butrterb, Kingthian Sunglung and Praemaithong Sunglung. Kingthian and Praemaithong died at the hospital.

Witnesses told police that they saw six or seven men arrive at the house in two vehicles at about 4pm on Monday. The men wore military-style camouflage clothes and they were all armed, witnesses said.

They pretended to be authorities checking the house and held everybody inside the house, witnesses said.

The village head returned to the house at about 8pm and he was handcuffed, witnesses said.

Neighbours head gunfire at about midnight.

The assailants took the village head’s Toyota Yaris and left, witnesses said.

There were 25 passengers on the bus.

Police said the accident happened at about 11pm on Phisit Road near Wat Suwankhiriwong, which is the Patong Beach-bound downhill road from Patong mountain.

The bus flipped after it swept through motorcycles parked on the side of the road in front of houses.

Police said Ly Jle Ru died inside the bus.

Of the 24 injured, two were in a serious condition. One of them was sent to Bangkok Phuket Hospital and the other to Vajira Phuket Hospital.

The bus driver, Krittaporn Nualtua, 36, a Phuket resident, said he was transporting the tourists to a Patong hotel when the bus’s brake system malfunctioned when the bus was going down the downhill road.

He said the bus went down the road very fast and he lost control and the bus crashed into motorcycles and flipped on its side.

The bus driver was not injured and he tested negative to drug use and alcohol.

The curved and downhill road, which is very steep, has seen many fatal accidents. On June 29, a bus transporting Chinese tourists hit and killed a motorcyclist after the bus’s brakes failed to work.

MANY SECTORS, including construction in the capital, fisheries in the South and agriculture in border areas, are facing labour shortages due to the tough new labour law, sources said yesterday as migrant workers began returning to Thailand.

A construction site of the Red Line train (Bang Sue-Rangsit) needed to slow down after many Myanmar workers left their work to reprocess work permits, an official said.

Workers at the construction site at Bang Sue central terminal also left work, even though they did not need to: they incorrectly believed that their “pink card” was no longer valid under the new law, the official added. He noted that those workers might take 10-20 days to check or reprocess the register before getting back to work.

However, other construction sectors were less affected by the new law, since major construction firms usually hire legal workers, according to an official at the State Railway of Thailand who declined to be named.

Millions of migrant workers in Thailand were in a chaotic situation over the past week after the government issued a new decree to manage migrant workers. The decree took effect on June 23, threatening fines for employers of at least Bt400,000 for every illegal worker they hire.

Only a few days after the decision, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha last Tuesday invoked his special powers under Article 44 to suspend four key articles of the decree until the end of the year. The suspended articles prescribe much harsher penalties against offending migrants and their employers until the end of this year.

The suspension came too late for many companies, as thousands of legal and illegal workers panicked over the tough punishment and rushed to go to their home countries to process or reprocess their work permits and to register. More than 50,000 migrant workers reportedly returned home since last month, mostly to Myanmar and Cambodia.

In order to end the chaos, the Labour Ministry will allow all Thai employers to register their Lao, Cambodian and Myanmar workers at temporary centres throughout the country from July 24 to August 7.

While Prime Minister Prayut said earlier that he believed the workers from neighbouring countries would return to work in Thailand as there are demands in the market, Nit Ouitengkor, former president of Ranong Chamber of Commerce, said they might not return due to complicated legal procedures. There are more jobs available in their countries, including Myanmar, since the economy there is now growing faster than Thailand’s, he said.

Ranong is Thailand’s southern port province, sitting next to Myanmar. The province is home to some of the most important fishery piers in the country.

Many piers in the province yesterday were seen almost empty, while some were working with only half of the normal workforce. While it is estimated that more than 5 million migrants from neighbouring countries are working in Thailand currently, it is estimated that only half of them are documented.

In the eastern border province of Sa Kaew, where there is a shortage of farm workers, local authorities coordinated with their Cambodian counterparts to encourage workers to cross the border to work. Many Cambodian workers have fled due to the new labour law in the past month, leaving many farms in trouble during the growing season.

Sa Kaew provincial immigration chief, Benjapon Rodsawad, said Cambodian people are allowed to cross the border to work temporarily in the area in order to ease the current labour shortage.

With border pass papers, Cambodians would be allowed to enter and stay in Sa Kaew and neighbouring Pachin Buri province for seven days, he said, “so we have to strictly check their document in order prevent them from going deeper to other provinces or the capital”.

THE DRASTIC policy to reduce the duration of teacher-education programmes from five to four years has raised many questions.

Not only does the policy seek to undo the initiative launched 13 years ago to improve teacher quality, it also fails to make clear how it will benefit the country’s educational sector.

“I wonder what research has backed this policy,” Asst Professor Athapol Anunthavorasakul, a lecturer at the Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of education, said. “And I wonder how this policy will raise teacher standards.”

Earlier this month, the Teachers’ Council of Thailand approved in principle the Thailand Education Deans Council’s (TEDC) proposal that education programmes for the country’s future teachers span just four years.

According to the TEDC, there is no point requiring students to study for five years given that Thai children’s scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) had not improved between 2000 and 2015.

“The first batch of teachers who come from the five-year programmes started service just in 2009. Their number is still relatively few in Thailand’s overall teacher workforce,” Athapol said, “So, are you too quick to judge the results from the five-year course?”

More than one decade ago, Thailand resolved to increase the duration of education programmes in the hope of raising teacher quality. At the time it was believed that students would have more time practising teaching, developing techniques and designing materials for better performance.

High hopes

At the launch of the programmes, there were high hopes that teacher quality and teachers’ salaries would rise. It was believed then that the teaching profession would also automatically attract more capable people. Athapol said he really could not understand the idea of undoing these well-intentioned programmes.

“Why don’t you think about increasing the programme duration from five to six years?” he said. “Why don’t you focus on what you expect of Thai children and how to design the programme to fulfil that expectation?”

Athapol attacked the Teachers’ Council of Thailand for approving the drastic policy.

“They didn’t even consult teacher-producing institutes first. We know nothing. Until lately, we have still worked on the plan to improve the five-year programmes,” he said.

Panya Thongnin, the dean of Ratchaburi Rajabhat University’s faculty of education, lamented that his institute had just completed revising its five-year programme two years ago.

“If you are going to switch to the four-year programme, we will have to overhaul the programme design,” he said. In the face of growing criticism, TEDC president Dr Prapansiri Susoarat has sought to explain that the policy is subject to further review.

“We still plan to gather more information and listen to the voice of all relevant parties. We, moreover, plan to conduct serious research on this policy for the ultimate goal of boosting the quality of education programmes,” she said via her Facebook account.

According to Prapansiri, although the majority vote at the TECD meeting on May 30 wanted to see the education programme’s duration reduced from five to four years, the TECD had already decided to conduct in-depth research first.

“We will take a careful approach to ensure no damage is done,” Prapansiri said. She also explained that the Teachers’ Council had to date only considered the proposal from the TECD. It had not yet made a final decision either.

‘Focus on improving quality’

“There is no need to quarrel over the four-year or five-year stuff. What we should focus on is how to improve the quality of teacher production,” the president of the TECD concluded.

Education Minister Teerakiat Jareonsettasin also explained separately that if teacher-training institutes switched to a four-year duration, their graduates would have to take an exam to get teaching licences.

“They will not automatically get one like those who graduate from the five-year programme,” he said.

However, the idea to reduce the length of the education programme is not without supporters.

Asst Prof Dr Pattanan Hansapiromchoke, a former deputy dean at the faculty of education and development sciences at Kasetsart University’s Kamphaeng Saen campus, said that in some other nations, teacher-education programmes took just three to four years but delivered impressive results.

“Teacher quality is great. This is also reflected in student quality, as children in those countries have performed well in PISA,” she said.

Pattanan said teacher-training institutes in Thailand should be made aware of the cost efficiency of their programmes. She added that research had shown that new-generation teachers lacked patience and were unable to cope with the actual work environment at schools because they were trained to teach at well-equipped schools.

She wants teacher-education institutes to switch back to four-year programmes.

Box

Education programmes

In 2004, teacher-training institutes launched five-year education programmes, replacing the four-year ones, in the hope of raising the quality of their graduates.

 How many students have applied to these programmes?

2011 – 2015: 206,037

Source: Thailand Education Deans Council