Piya Thedyam, creator of the campaign on Change.org for ending the use of so-called otter trawls, emphasised that the marine ecosystem, biodiversity and seafood sustainability of Thai seas were in great danger as long as this destructive fishing equipment was still allowed to operate in Thai waters.

For these reasons, Piya started seeking signatures for the online petition to Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Grisada Boonrach in an effort to preserve the marine ecosystem, ensure the survival of rare aquatic animal species, and promote sustainable fishing, as the otter-trawlers had just proven the harm they were doing to marine life by snaring the whale shark in their nets off the coast of Phuket.

“I would like to use the case of this whale shark to motivate the fishermen, seafood lovers, and all people to show solidarity in protecting our beloved oceans, marine animals and our sources of seafood by signing the petition to criminalise [otter] trawling and come up with high penalties for using this destructive fishing equipment,” he said.

“If we still allow these trawlers to operate freely in the sea, we may witness rare aquatic animals such as whale sharks or sea turtles become the next victims, while the very fine net of the trawls will scoop up anything in their path, including juvenile fish, cutting down the reproduction cycle, until there are no fish left for us in the sea,” he added.

The petition is open for signatures at http://change.org/whaleshark.

“One of the suspects is now in detention and has provided useful information,” Pattani police chief Pol Lt-General Piyawat Chalermsri said yesterday. “Moreover, we have evidence that can nail down several of his alleged accomplices.”

Among that evidence is video from closed-circuit cameras and the testimonies of witnesses.

“When we checked the suspects against records of old security cases, we could identify many of them,” Piyawat said.

“They are old and new members of the BRN,” he added, referring to the militant separatist movement.

Pattani province was rocked by almost a dozen explosions on Sunday night. The ongoing investigation indicates that suspects gathered at a location in the Muang Pattana Municipality’s area before heading out separately to carry out the attacks.

Typically, at least two insurgents carry out each bomb attack, but the investigation into Sunday’s blasts revealed only one bomber planted each device.

“When they act alone, it becomes easier for them to evade detection,” Piyawat said.

He was speaking after police in Songkhla province announced they would also seek an arrest warrant for a suspect in the attacks there.

A source at Saba Yoi Police Station said yesterday that investigators identified a man caught on camera at an ATM booth just before one of two bombs went off there as Waekoyee Taleh, a suspected sympathiser of the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK) militant Islamic insurgent group.

Several explosions rocked Songkhla on Sunday.

Meanwhile at Yala’s Bannang Sata Police Station, superintendent Pol Col Theeraphot Yindee said CCTV images from scenes of 11 bomb attacks in the district showed suspects with features similar to men wanted in other national security cases. He said more information was being collected with an eye to seeking warrants.

Security measures have been ramped up in business hubs, densely populated areas and state offices following the 20 bomb attacks in Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla at the weekend.

 As many as 308 Ford car owners have demanded more than Bt24 million in compensation from the firm over DPS6 gearbox problems.

“After purchasing a Ford car at Bt700,000, I have experienced chronic gearbox issues. Each time I send my car to a service centre, my car has to be kept there for seven days to one month,” Ekachai Kaewsap, one of the plaintiffs, said about his ordeal yesterday.

He was speaking after the Civil Court of South Bangkok accepted the class-action lawsuit and scheduled not just hearings but also the verdict date in the case.

Plaintiff witnesses have been told to testify in court on August 1. Defence witnesses, meanwhile, will speak in court on August 30 and 31.

The court plans to deliver its verdict at 10am on September 28.

“This is a historic case. It’s a class-action lawsuit that comprises hundreds of victims,” Jinna Yam-uam said, as the head of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “It’s a milestone in Thailand’s consumer-protection efforts.”

According to him, Ford Australia had recently been fined nearly Bt300 million for “unconscionable conduct” for failing to fix dodgy transmissions of 10,500 cars made between 2011 and 2015.

Chanita Sukkwan, a plaintiff in Thailand’s class-action lawsuit against Ford, said she hoped the case would set a precedent.

“Consumers should stand up and fight against enterprises that have been taking advantage of them. Do not bow down,” she said.

She believed the Office of the Consumer Protection Board did not do enough to protect consumers.

“We will rally further to have an independent agency for consumer protection established,” Chanita said.

According to her, several victims of the faulty Ford gearbox withdrew their complaints as they could not bear the adverse impacts during the fight for justice.

“They have to pay for repair charges every now and then. So, some have decided to sell their car instead,” Chanita said.

Last year, 421 Ford-car owners came forward and took their case to the court. However, during the past year more than 100 have withdrawn their complaints.

The withdrawals are also due to negotiations with Ford-related firms.

Through negotiations, the number of defendants in the case has reduced from four to just one.

THE GOVERNMENT will have to take responsibility for the damage to people’s health and the environment and could face lawsuits if it allows the renewal of licences for paraquat and two other agro-chemicals, activists caution.

The Hazardous Substance Committee will today make a decision on the future of paraquat, glyphosate and chlorpyrifos.

A group of agriculture and consumer protection activists gathered at the Industrial Works Department yesterday to submit a petition to the head of the Hazardous Substance Committee, calling for a total ban on these chemicals.

The groups cited scientific facts that corroborated the adverse impacts of these commonly used herbicides – paraquat and glyphosate – and pesticide chlorpyrifos to public health and the environment.

Despite its efforts, the group said it was very likely that further use of these chemicals would be allowed.

BioThai Foundation director Witoon Lianjamroon warned the committee of consequences if it failed to act, adding the government would have to take the blame and responsibility.

“Unless these harmful chemicals are banned, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha and his administration would have to be held responsible for people’s sickness and environmental contamination,” Witoon said.

“Any move to renew the licences for these chemicals would show that the government cared more for the interests of transnational conglomerates instead of the well-being of its citizens,” he said.

The secretary-general of the Environmental Litigation and Advocacy for Wants Foundation, Surachai Throngngam, appealed to committee members to exercise their obligation to carefully and transparently decide on such an important policy, based on the Constitution and the laws of the country, or they may face lawsuits.

“The members of the Hazardous Substance Committee are considered to be administrative officials, so it is their duty to follow the Constitution and laws, even though they can have their own point of view on this issue,” Surachai said.

“Nevertheless, they have to make sure that their decision is reasonable, not in conflict with legislation, and for the greater good of the public,” he said.

He added that the committee members must remember the current Constitution guarantees citizens the right to live in a clean and healthy environment and Hazardous Substance Committee regulations also forbid members who may have an interest on the issue from casting a vote.

He added that if the public found the decision of the committee unlawful, they could sue the committee or

the Industry Ministry in the Administrative Court.

However, the coordinator for a Ratchaburi farmer network, Anchulee Luck-Amnuaiporn, expressed her full support for continuing the use of paraquat, glyphosate and chlorpyrifos, as she said these chemicals were needed by farmers. She said the chemicals were effective in controlling weeds and pests, which helped reduce production costs for farmers.

“The reports about paraquat contaminating the environment and our crops are baseless and just slander from the so-called consumer protection activists. If these chemicals are banned, the cost of production would increase by 55 times and leave poor farmers in financial disaster,” Anchulee explained.

However, another farmer from Khao Chaison district in Phatthalung province, Prapai Kongto, revealed that her family and many members of her farming community had stopped using the chemicals more than 10 years ago. She said their experience was completely at odds with Anchulee’s claims. Prapai said organic farming produced a higher income than traditional chemical farming.

Prapai said that after a majority of her community switched to organic farming, she also noticed many people, including herself, were healthier.

Farmers had previously suffered frequent rashes, while one of her relatives who worked with paraquat had died of lung cancer.

“My alternative method to fight weeds in my farm is to uproot them by hand. This method may be hard work and time-consuming, but it is good exercise and keeps me healthy. I would like to urge other farmers to stop using paraquat and ask the authorities to ban these toxic substances for good,” she added.

National police deputy chief Pol General Weerachai Songmetta led the raid by police and officials at 9am against WMD (Wai Mei Dat) Thai Recycling Co Ltd’s 100-rai factory in Tambon Plaeng Yao. The action came in response to Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan’s directive to the Royal Thai Police to crackdown on such wrongdoers.

Officers found the factory was operating normally when they arrived. Huge piles of electronic waste such as keyboards, electrical wires and computers were sitting ready for workers to recycle or discard by burning or other methods.

Most of the workers handling the toxic waste were found to be undocumented and untrained Lao and Myanmar migrants being paid Bt9,000 a month.

Burning electronic circuit boards to extract heavy metals risked contamination of the surrounding environment, while hard plastic parts were toxic when burnt or would take millions of years to disintegrate when buried, said Weerachai, adding that this hazardous industrial waste required specific and proper disposal methods.

Weerachai and deputy chief of the Tourism Police Bureau Pol Maj General Surachet Hakpan led a search involving five ministries – Natural Resources and Environment, Public Health, Industry, Justice and the Ministry of Finance.

Weerachai said the unnamed Chinese owner of the facility was accused of importing potentially dangerous electronic waste under false Customs declarations.

“Thailand is now among the world’s top-ranked countries in terms of volume of electronic waste because foreign investors are smuggling the trash here – declaring it as second-hand goods – for disposal,” Weerachai said, citing a report that Hong Kong had over 100,000 tonnes of electronic waste pending distribution to other countries for disposal.

The Phetchaburi Administrative Court on Monday ruled that the sling and equipment on the plane were substandard, causing the deaths.

The court found that facts and technical information presented during the trial showed four hooks of a sling installed onto the plane, which was used in the practice parachute jump from 1,250 feet, had traces of being modified hence they were not up to the manufacturer-certified standard.

RTP officials testified that the pilot and mechanics had inspected the equipment before flight and still agreed to use the plane with a substandard sling set. The court, however, deemed the RTP officials guilty of neglecting to follow up with repairs and inspection of the plane and its equipment before its use for civil service.

The court ruled that the RTP’s use of such a plane for the cadets’ practice parachute jump, which led to the two cadets’ deaths, was a violation under civil law. The court ordered the RTP to pay Bt2.365 million to the father of deceased cadet Chayakorn Puthachaiyong and Bt2.367 million to the father of deceased cadet Nathawuth Tirasuwansuk at an interest of 7.5 per cent per annum from March 26, 2015 when the lawsuit was filed. The court ordered the compensation to be fully paid within 60 days of the verdict.

The court also ordered the RTP to pay Bt1.728 million at 7.5 per cent interest per annum to Nathawuth’s mother within 60 days.

The tragedy took place in March 2014 at the Air Support Command headquarters of the Border Patrol Police in Naresuan camp in Prachuap Khiri Khan province. Eight second-year cadets of Class 69 of the Police Academy and an instructor, Pol Colonel Preecha Boonsuk, jumped from the plane in a practice session but the parachutes of the six cadets did not open. While four cadets managed to open their reserve parachutes and land safely, cadets Chayakorn and Nathawuth crashed to the ground and died.

Investigators identified the man caught on camera at an ATM booth just before one of two bombs went off in Songkhla as Waekoyee Taleh, a suspected sympathiser of the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK) militant Islamic insurgent group.

Meanwhile at Yala’s Bannang Sata Police Station, superintendent Pol Col Theeraphot Yindee said CCTV images from 11 bombing scenes in the district showed several suspects with features similar to those of people wanted in other national security cases.

He said more information was being collected with an eye to seeking warrants, but he did not elaborate further.

And in Pattani, Fourth Army commander Lt Gen Piyawat Nakwanich visited Sompit Sakolwichit, a civilian injured in a blast there on Sunday. He told her the culprits would be arrested soon.

Security measures have been ramped up in business hubs, densely populated areas and state offices following the 20 sabotage attacks in Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla.

Surapong Kongchanthuek, a member of a committee in charge of coordinating the effort, said the Education Ministry had submitted a list of 92,919 students to the Registration Administration Bureau of the Interior Ministry’s Provincial Administration Department.

Surapong said the Education Ministry’s Information Technology and Communications Centre calculated from an online database of government schools that 14.882 million students did not have a 13-digit citizenship identification number.

Without that number, they could be denied basic rights, he said.

The ministry endorsed 92,919 of these students as the children of Thais living mainly in the borderlands without citizenship, and asked the registration bureau to grant the students 13-digit numbers, he said.

The bureau has since determined that 2,211 of the students on the list do in fact already have the 13-digit number, but will work with other agencies to include the rest of the 93,000.

Surapong said Chiang Mai has the most Thai students without citizenship ID – 17,423 youngsters – followed by Chiang Rai (12,824), Tak (9,332) and Kanchanaburi (5,896). Bangkok has 1,847.

The Interior Ministry has instructed provincial governors to speed up the process of verifying citizenship for these students.

The process begins with school directors, tambon chiefs and tambon hospital heads signing ID confirmation documents for the students.

Surapong said all government schools must accept students even if they have no ID number. The schools can then work with their local household registration office to secure citizenship ID.