On Monday, they issued a joint statement urging the governments to take action against, among others, corruption among governmental departments related to the project, forced relocation, and to solve the problems before resuming the ground construction of the project.

“If the project is to continue in the old way without finding the root causes to the problems caused by mismanagement, and taking effective action, the locals [people] will be greatly affected and the sustainable and real development for our country would not be created,” it said.

A number of CSOs and more than 10 villagers stated their cases at an event on Monday. It followed the three governments’ agreement to resume the project, starting with the initial phase awarded to the consortium led by Italian-Thai Development. During 2010-2012, ITD, the original concessionaire which later relinquished the concession, started works on some infrastructure projects.

Htein Than said he and others in Payadat village feared losing agricultural land if the project resumes. He said some in the village, housing more than 300 households and 1,000 people, lost farmland when ITD started a quarry. Waste from rock production has also destroyed nearly 81 hectares of paddy fields. ITD offered to pay 3 million kyats for an acre, but residents said compensation should be 10 million kyats (Bt87,000). No negotiation followed, he said.

“We do not know anything but farming. If we lose farmland, we really do not know what to do for our survival,” he said emotionally.

Maung Than of Mayingyi village said more than 81 hectares of paddy fields in his village was destroyed because of the construction of a road linking the quarry to the SEZ site. He said the road blocked the waterway and led to flooding in some areas and shortage in others. He is afraid that the project resumption would worsen the conditions.

Both hope that the new government would look at the problems.

Penchom Saetang, director of Ecological Alert and Recovery-Thailand (EARTH), was among the CSO representatives s attending the event. She raised three demands to the Thai government: new feasibility study, the realigning of participatory processes and other related measures in compliance with laws, norms and standard practices in Thailand.

Information disclosure

She noted that information disclosure must be improved as Myanmar’s law and regulatory system remains too weak to handle extremely critical social and environmental issues associated with massive investment projects like this.

Saw Frankie, director of Tanasserim River and Indigenous People Networks, said land grabbing emerged after the road construction. He said rich people from the city were granted titles for communal land which was partly converted to rubber plantations.

He attributed ongoing conflicts to lack of corporate social responsibility, failure to information disclosure and lack of standard compensation system.

“Compensation offered is not enough to sustain the family’s future. The villagers cannot buy a land plot of the same size in other locations. Land available in the relocation site is not sufficient and the houses built there are not strong enough for potential disasters. All in all, the remedy is not secure enough for alternative livelihoods,” said Thant Zin, director of Dawei Development Association.

Nirun Phitakwatchara, former national human rights commissioner of Thailand, said Thailand’s ministries of Foreign Affairs and Commerce and relevant agencies should establish a regulatory mechanism to oversee transnational investment by Thai investors and ensure compliance to the United Nations’ human rights guidelines.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar government should focus on public |discussions and transparency enhancement. It must ensure the proper system for environmental and social impact assessment, project management and fair compensation scheme.

“The new government needs to comply with best practices to ensure human rights are respected,” he said.

“Public consultations should also be conducted in Kanchanaburi so that Thai people can listen to the Dawei people and exchange views … People normally look at results but we urge them to focus on process. We need more consultation processes.”

After yesterday’s meeting with Somkid, Somchai Sujjapongse, permanent secretary of the Finance Ministry, said the ministry had been assigned to finalise its measures to stimulate private consumption particularly among low-income earners, which could boost spending in the next three to four months.

“The form of injection will require discussion and the planned measures will be concluded in one to two weeks before forwarding them to Somkid for consideration and announcement,” Somchai said.

He reported to Somkid that the economy still had strong fundamentals, but with negative news, overall confidence was eroded.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has asked the ministry to communicate with people on this issue and the government’s economic stimulus measures. These include the Bt100-billion relief measures for drought victims and the Bt20-billion project for small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises under the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives.

The Fiscal Policy Office reported that there was no concern over the economy. Domestic consumption, with value-added-tax collections as the proxy, the external debt ratio, foreign reserves and unemployment rate all indicated strong economic stability. January’s exports contracted by 8.9 per cent, but this was still better than in several other countries. Only a few countries including Indonesia witnessed higher export value than Thailand.

Somkid also asked the ministry to set up funds to increase the competitiveness of 10 industries. If the funds are introduced soon, that will build up the confidence of investors, Somchai said.

The ministry will today discuss with the Council of the State the necessity for the funds to be established in the expectation that they will be launched within one to two months.

The Thailand Future Fund is expected to be set up this month and raise more than Bt100 billion by June.

SRT governor Wuthichart Kalyanamitra said yesterday that the authority was not preventing foreign firms from participating in the bidding for construction of the government’s investment projects, but they had to comply with Thai rules and regulations.

He told a seminar on the “Infrastructure Development Plan: Time Frame and Obstacles” that he wanted to see the foreign parent companies that were interested in joining the state’s projects, for example, set up joint ventures with Thai firms.

This was because most foreign companies have used a newly registered subsidiary to form a JV with a local firm.

Those JVs had less registered capital than the project’s value, so when something went wrong, the authority could not claim for damages from the foreign firms, he said.

The seminar was part of the SET Thai Corporate Day inbound roadshow organised by the Stock Exchange of Thailand in cooperation with CIMB Group.

The theme was “Driving the Economy with Sustainable Growth”.

SRT is pushing for six dual-track railway construction projects to be kick-started this year.

90percent single-track

The country has 4,000 kilometres of railroads, 90 per cent of which are single tracks.

Also under the government’s consideration are the Sino-Thai medium-speed rail project, three Japanese-Thai high-speed projects and extensions of the Red Line’s Bang Sue-Taling Chan and Bang Sue-Rangsit urban rail routes.

The projects under SRT’s undertaking will cost many billions of baht.

Peerayudh Singpatanakul, governor of the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand, said there were about 10 lines to be carried out.

The Purple Line Bang Sue-Bang Yai route is expected to launch services in August. Construction on the Blue Line extension is 72 per cent complete and on the Green Line extension 77 per cent complete.

Other lines such as the Orange, Pink and Yellow are being considered by the government for a public-private partnership (PPP) fast-track scheme that could help them start construction quicker, he said.

Wanchak Chayakul, director of the Highways Department’s planning bureau, said the department had three flagship projects under its responsibility.

Two were the extensions of the Bangkok-Pattaya motorway from Pattaya to Map Ta Phut and of the Bangkok-Bang Pa-In motorway from Bang Pa-In to Nakhon Ratchasima.

The last project is a four-lane highway for the Kanchanaburi-Bang Yai route, which will link Myanmar to Laos and Vietnam in the future.

“The extensions of the Bangkok-Pattaya and Bangkok-Bang Pa-in motorways are undergoing a feasibility study to be completed by the middle of this year,” he said.

The PPP scheme is also in its plan, he said.

Wuthichart Kulyanamitra, governor of the State Railway of Thailand, said yesterday that the construction cost under the new design was also lower than the last projection of Bt530 billion.

However, he declined to go into detail on the new designs and new cost.

“We are considering the new designs recently submitted by the Chinese side,” he said.

“There is still a question left on the shares of investment from Thailand and China.” – The Nation