Labour Minister Apai Chanthanajulaka said yesterday he had also ordered an investigation into an SSO project to honour His Majesty the King, over the printing of nine millions cards to be sold to labourers so they could write goodwill messages on them.

Apai had earlier scrapped an SSO project to purchase a Bt500-million building from Wattachak Publications after discovering the renovations on the building were not done as stated in the contract.

As for the IT project, Phairoj reportedly signed the deal on September 28 despite two recommendations beforehand not to - by inspector-general Nakhon Silpa-archa and the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).

At a recent meeting after the deal was signed, Phairoj summoned a labour leader to defend the deal and explained it would handle a database of labourers' profiles - but, he failed to convince Apai and ministry officials to go ahead with it.

The meeting did not approve with Phairoj's explanation that he signed the deal because former minister Somsak Thepsuthin approved it in principal on September 6.

After Nakhon's recommendation against signing the deal, the OAG also issued a warning to the ministry on September 25, but Phairoj still signed it three days later. The SSO secretary now has until Thursday to submit a written explanation as to why he signed the deal.