“He is the most hard-working deputy governor. If he has to leave his post, he will do that when I leave,” Aswin said.

He was speaking after the National Anti-Corruption Commission nudged him to look into allegations that Jakkapan had abused his authority to cancel the registration of a road as a public road reportedly in favour of a condo project.

The 150-metre-long road, which stretches from Rama IV Road to the Siva Prathan Foundation in Bang Rak district, had been registered as a public road for about two decades before Jakkapan allegedly cancelled its status in favour of the Whizdom Chinatown condo project.

The cancellation apparently took place when locals began complaining that the construction of the 33-storey condo was blocking the road.

However, records show that Jakkapan signed the cancellation in response to the opinions of a committee that was established to look into the complaint.

“I will look into the details,” Aswin said, adding that though he had the power to dismiss his deputy he had no intentions to do so.

He also added that the BMA permanent secretary did not have the authority to launch an investigation against Jakkapan either.

The company has joined hands with the Safe Cities for Women Network on various initiatives to curb sexual harassment on its buses.

Bus drivers and conductors are being trained and educated on how to “butt in” when passengers are sexually harassed and a video educating passengers on how to protect themselves is also being shown on the company’s entire fleet of 480 buses throughout the year, starting yesterday.

“This is a new year present for everyone who travels with us,” said Jirasak Yaowatsakul, managing director of the Transport Company at a campaign launch at its Bangkok bus terminal in Chatuchak yesterday.

Jirasak says hundreds of thousands of passengers pack into the company’s buses during the New Year holiday – on its peak days, December 29 and 30, as many as 200,000 passengers are expected to travel from Bangkok to their hometowns, compared to some 80,000 passengers on usual days.

The company and the Safe Cities for Women network also plan to install a CCTV camera inside every one of the buses to record incidents for use as evidence by mid-2019, Jirasak said.

QR code signs will also be put inside the bus, to encourage passengers to report more often since it is considered that incidents of sexual harassment are underreported, he added.

Bus conductor Maychadathon Visungre told The Nation such incidents happen frequently.

Maychadathon, who rides on buses between Bangkok and Mukdahan, said most of these incidents either involve a male passenger resting their head on the shoulder of a fellow passenger or a male passenger in the window seat getting in and out to the aisle to get their bags “so that their body touches that of the female passenger,” she said.

From her experience, most [female] passengers don’t keep quiet when such incidents happen – but all they do is ask to switch seats, she said.

Maychadathon, who has been trained by Safe Cities for Women, said she always tells her boss when something like that happens and asks the female passenger involved to get another seat in order to prevent it happening again. If the incident gets out of hand, she asks the male driver to stop the vehicle and resolve the issue.

In Bangkok 45 per cent of female passengers reported being sexually harassed, according to a 2017 survey by Safe Cities for Women Network, of which 15.4 per cent reported being touched or groped.

“It is our commitment to make public transportation and public spaces safe for women and girls,” said ActionAid Thailand director Tauhid Ibne Farid. The organisation is supporting 45 countries in campaigns to make it safe for women to travel in cities.

In Thailand, the Safe Cities for Women Network comprises ActionAid Thailand, the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, Sexuality Studies Association, Women and Men Progressive Movement Foundation, and the Four Regions Slum Network. The network plans to partner with other government transport agencies, including the Marine Department and Land Transport Department, said Rungtip Imrungruang, programme and policy manager at ActionAid Thailand. She said they had also recruited 800 passengers to join “teampueak,” meaning a “nosy” team, where its members learn how to safely protect others from sexual harassment on public transport.

On the Teampueak.org website, the network also educate “teampueak” and bus assistants on how to correctly deal with the incident.

The campaign will soon extend to a further 40,000 buses, run by private companies under the contract with the Transport Company, Jirasak said.

TWO UNIVERSITIES will not accept applications for their teacher-education programmes in the first round of TCAS (the Thai University Central Admission System), because they need more time to change the programme duration from five to four years.

The two universities – Khon Kaen University (KKU) and Chiang Mai University (CMU) – are among those complying with a recent government policy to cut teacher-education programmes to four years.

The first of five rounds of TCAS, requires applicants to submit portfolios between December 1 and 15.

Under new TCAS rules, applicants who secure a university seat will not be allowed to apply again in successive rounds. That rule could limit the options for teaching applicants who are accepted elsewhere in the first round but would prefer to study at the prestigious universities in Khon Kaen or Chiang Mai.

“We are still in the process of adjusting our curriculum to match the change in course duration,” Maitree Inprasitha, dean of the KKU Faculty of Education, said yesterday, “So, we will skip the first round. But definitely, we will participate in other rounds.”

The Education Ministry only last month announced teacher-education programmes would be cut to four years. The move reversed the policy for five-year programmes that was introduced in 2004 in the hope of raising teacher quality and promoting the prestige of the profession.

The CMU Faculty of Education has now announced that it will not accept applications in the first round of TCAS, also citing the need to adjust the curriculum. CMU also says it will start receiving applications in the second round of TCAS.

KKU’s Maitree believes the curriculum revision would be finished by February, in time for the second round of TCAS.

The second round offers quotas of seats for specific groups of students, including sports talents or those living in the chosen institute’s home region.

The third round features exams to determine successful candidates. The fourth round will use the accumulated grade point average of applicants, along with Ordinary National Educational Test (Onet) scores (30 per cent), and General Aptitude Test (GAT)/Professional Aptitude Test (PAT) scores (50 per cent) as criteria. The fifth round, meanwhile, features direct admission by each university.

Siridej Sujiva, dean of Chulalongkorn University’s (CU) Faculty of Education, is confident that his institute can adjust the teacher-education curriculum in time for the first round of TCAS.

“We are still working on the revision. But we trust that we will be able to participate in all five rounds of TCAS,” he said.

CU’s four-year teacher-education programme will have between 138 and 140 credits, with a focus on competencies and teaching practice.

Siridej said he expected students in the four-year teacher education programmes to start teaching practice from Year 1.

The government has offered different salary rates for graduates of four-year and five-year education programmes. Graduates from the four-year programmes will be paid Bt15,050 a month if they work for the public sector. Those from five-year programmes will receive Bt15,800 a month.

Pol Maj-General Surachet Hakpan, acting immigration department chief, said the arrest of Kuliushin Vitalii in Phuket province was in response to a court-ordered arrest warrant against him.

“Police sought charges against him for falsifying official documents and fraud, as well as for violating the Computer Act and possibly harming the national security,” he said.

Thailand often appoints local people as honorary consuls in different countries to help facilitate immigration work.

Vitalii, 60, had held the position in Vladivostok, Russia but his appointment was revoked by a Cabinet resolution in 2006.

Responding to a request from the Consular Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry, police found that Vitalii ran a website where he advertised his services, claiming that he was still authorised to do immigration processes, such as stamping visas and certifying documents.

He allegedly collected about 5,400 rubles (Bt2,700) in fees from each customer.

Surachet told reporters that the Russian’s alleged acts violated multiple laws, including the Computer Act. “The suspect had committed more than 100 offences before coming to Thailand and lying low,” he said.

If the bill becomes law, the religious leaders say they will not perform marriage rituals for LGBT couples. No religious leader is required to perform rituals under the proposed law.

Islam does not allow people of the same sex to have sexual relations. Thailand’s neighbour Malaysia, for example, considers sodomy a crime. Malay Muslims are the majority in the Thai South.

“Only in the South has our public forum on the Life Partnership Bill heard opposition,” Nareeluc Pairchaiyapoom, who heads the Rights and Liberties Protection Department’s International Human Rights Division, said yesterday.

Her department has held public forums on the bill in all regions of the Kingdom, which has the highest percentage of Buddhists at 93 per cent.

Nareeluc said the forum for the southern region took place on November 15 in Songkhla province, with local religious leaders and LGBT members from other regions among the 136 participants.

“Muslim leaders do not agree with the bill. They are worried about its content because they think it runs against their religion,” Nareeluc said.

She said her department had explained to Muslim leaders that the bill would not force anyone to register a same-sex marriage.

“Most participants at our forums have supported the bill,” she said.

Her department has also gathered public opinions on the bill via its website, with most comments supporting the bill. A total of 3,055 people commented on the bill through the online platform. “We are now processing data we have gathered. After we integrate it into the bill, we will submit it to Deputy PM and Justice Minister ACM Prajin Juntong,” Nareeluc said.

Many comments have emphasised that the bill should also allow LGBT couples to adopt children.

Nareeluc expected the bill to reach Prajin before the end of this month.

“He will then forward it to the Cabinet,” she said.

If the Cabinet gives the green light, the bill will go the National Legislative Assembly.

The mammoth Life Partnership Bill – it has no fewer than 70 sections – allows gender-diverse couples many of the same rights recognised for heterosexual partners, including inheritance and marital property matters, as well as the legal right to make medical decisions for a partner who is incapacitated.

Praew (not her real name) said she was pouring drinks with four or five Korean customers at her Thong Lor club until it closed. She said she felt drunk and hailed a taxi to a friend’s Ratchadapisek condominium.

She said as she got out of the taxi, she fainted and only regained consciousness the next afternoon.

Her female friend posted photos on Facebook showing her intoxicated at 3am on November 21, as a caution to other women. The post was shared more than 30,000 times. It said it was lucky the victim reached the friend’s apartment in time to avoid possible sexual assault.

She undressed because she was overheating, the post said.

Praew’s friend later commented on the post that she suspected “white tincture”, a tasteless and odourless Category II psychotropic substance that was usually given to horses for breeding, was used to spike Praew’s drink.

Praew said she was still in shock and afraid. She would apparently talk to the club manager about filing a possible police complaint.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deputy secretary-general Dr Surachoke Tangwiwat warned that the “libido-boosting” substances used to spike drinks were not medicines registered with the FDA as they had no medical properties. They were sometimes given to horses for breeding, Surachoke said.

White tincture was mistaken as a “libido booster” because it increased blood circulation resulting in hot flushes, especially in the genitals, where veins gathered, he explained.

Surachoke said possession of such substance that was not registered with FDA is punishable with a Bt5,000 fine or three years in jail.

He said there were no deaths reported from spiking.

She died at the second hospital she was taken to after allegedly being refused treatment at Praram 2 Hospital in Bangkok, said SSO Secretary-General Ananchai Uthaipattanacheep on Thursday.

Chorladda’s family filed a request in Khon Kaen.

This board will examine if the death was caused by poor medical treatment.

Anachai said Praram 2 might be removed from the SSO system.

The Health Service Support Department (HSSD) probe, which reported earlier this week, was unclear if the private hospital denied treatment to the patient. The SSO had asked the HSSD for an answer, Anachai said.

On November 9, Chorladda was attacked with acid by her husband, who was later arrested.

She and her 12-year-old daughter arrived at Praram 2 in a taxi at dawn with acid burns on her face and neck. But she left soon after in another taxi for Bang Mod Hospital, where she was entitled to free treatment, and where she died.

According to the HSSD, Praram 2 might have committed five legal offences, including a failure to follow guidelines about how to categorise emergency patients and a failure to ensure a proper transfer.

HSSD chief Nattawuth Prasertsiripong said the body would lodge a complaint with the police to bring the case to court. If convicted of all these alleged offences, the operator of Praram 2 Hospital will face both a fine and a jail term. Most of these offences are punishable by a jail term of up to two years, and a maximum fine of Bt40,000.

The Public Health Ministry’s Department of Health deputy chief Dr Bancha Khakhong said on Thursday that young people usually release flowery floats into rivers and water sources at night during the festival and then hang out or attend booze-drinking parties. This impairs their judgement and self-control and poses a risk of unprotected sex that could lead to unwanted pregnancy and STDs. Bancha urged boys to be responsible and use condoms.

Young women could also take emergency birth-control pills sold over-counter to reduce the chance of pregnancy, the official said, warning that such medicine however isn’t for regular use as it was less effective compared to other methods.

“The best way is to restrain one’s emotion, refrain from sex or have protected sex, and to be aware of the issue of premature sex and subsequent problems,” Bancha said.

Families can provide good advice to youngsters about appropriate interaction with members of the opposite sex, and Thailand’s traditional values of reserving themselves and the respectful treatment of women and girls, the officials said.

Apichatpong, a soft-spoken 48-year-old from rural Thailand, may not leap out as a household name.

But he is the figurehead of Thailand’s cinema scene and a doyen of the global arthouse circuit, vaunted for his non-linear storytelling, dreamy shooting style and strong — if often subtle — political messaging.

With his home country under military rule since 2014, the filmmaker told AFP he decided not to make the film in Thailand, where political discussion is stifled and he says films can be shut down on the whim of the generals.

    To make a movie without addressing the urgent issue of the kingdom’s politics would be to undermine his role as a filmmaker, Apichatpong says.

“I want to talk about politics, our reality, our lives,” he told AFP this week before an awards event on November 19 in Nakhon Pathom, outside Bangkok.

Military rule has suffocated artistic expression in Thailand, but with elections slated for early next year a creative kickback is emerging, from documentaries to rap and graffiti.

Yet for film the road ahead is long, Apichatpong said, explaining that “cinema will follow… real democracy and rights” and adding he is happy to “nurture a new generation of filmmakers”.

Apichatpong was catapulted to recognition by “Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives”, which won the 2010 Palme d’Or at Cannes.

His elegiac films sweep through mysterious forests, mystical creatures, hallucinations and bruised national histories.

In December he is due to release a short in the kingdom as part of “Ten Years Thailand”, a bold project to document his nation’s political and social travails.

 – Memory and ghosts –

But his next feature, “Memoria”, which is currently being scripted, will be filmed in Colombia — a country that shares some parallels to his politically fragmented homeland.

Set between 1970 and 1980, a period marked by the bitter fight between the left-wing Farc guerillas and radical paramilitary groups of the right, the film features Swinton playing an expat “adventurer” of sorts.

She experiences auditory hallucinations and tries to “find the sources of these sounds happening to her only”, the Thai director explained.

Research took in two months-long trips to Colombia and interviews with psychiatrists about drug use, he said, typical of his immersive approach to filmmaking.

Apichatpong had for years quietly been working on a script for his long-time friend Swinton.

The pair eventually agreed to frame the story outside Thailand, where they were “both strangers… both foreigners”.

“The story is about discovery. She (Swinton) is very adventurous. She has different lives in the cinema world, she has more mainstream movies… but also experimental movies.”

French actress Jeanne Balibar, who met the Thai director when they were jury members at Cannes in 2008, will also star in the film as an archeologist.

The story draws on a motif that runs through all his films — ghosts.

Apichatpong’s parents were doctors and he grew up in a hospital compound where “sickness, death and birth” left an indelible mark, while he was also preoccupied with sci-fi and the supernatural throughout childhood.

“There was nothing at that time except those magazines of sci-fi, ghost comics and ghost movies,” he said.

“So to me they belong to the same place, a place out of the ordinary, antigravity, something that can appear at night and disappear in front of your eyes.”

But there was logic in the leap to Colombia — firstly from a financing perspective for an international film, but also to satisfy his curiosity.

“I was very interested in Latin American culture, I was very interested in the Amazon. But when I was there I was more attracted to the people, to their memories,” he said.

“They also really believe in ghosts.”

The foundation said that such a threat was a step towards sexual violence, Thai Public Broadcasting Service (TPBS) reported on Thursday.

The foundation, which monitored 294 sexual violence reports in 14 newspapers last year, found that 26 sexual violent crimes (or 8.8 per cent) were committed by a person the victim knew via online social network, said the foundation’s senior staff member Angkhana Intasa.

The study found that 128 cases (43.5 per cent), were committed by an acquaintance of the victim, followed by 112 (38.2 per cent) of cases were committed by strangers and 28 (9.5 per cent) were committed by the victims’ family members or relatives.

As society still largely perceived the online world as unreal, sexual harassment – which includes small acts of harassment through words or bigger acts such as a release of the victims’ obscene photos online – was viewed as a non-serious issue.

“The victims often chose to let it go, partially because they didn’t think it was a violent act and some thought the legal action against wrongdoers would be difficult and take too long,” Angkhana said.

With the Internet’s ability to spread information far, wide and fast, most victims chose not to go through a legal process to contain the damage, she added.

Angkhana said that sexual harassment online or offline should constitute a legal offence. “If [offenders] feel they can harass another person with words as if that person isn’t an equal human being, it can make [them] dare to proceed to violate the person’s other rights, such as launch a physical attack,” she said.