The Democrat Party yesterday lodged a request to the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) asking it to probe an Interior Ministry project to establish a fire-fighting school as it contained "many questionable" conditions.

Deputy party spokesman Yuttapong Charassatien, speaking after meeting with DSI officials, said the school project was "similar in many ways" to the fire-truck scandal that has already engulfed the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA).

The fire-fighting school, with a project cost of Bt3.73 billion, was launched in 2004 not long after the Bt6.68-billion fire-truck deal that has been investigated by the DSI, resulting in many local and national politicians being implicated.

Yuttapong said a number of contract conditions in the school project had been changed. For example, tax-exemption conditions had been altered. Similarly, there are still legal disputes going on as to whether the BMA would have to shoulder the tax burden for the fire-truck deal, in which the tax exemption was not stated clearly in the original contract.

The school project involves a Bt1.19-billion facility network, a Bt1.9-billion budget for equipment and vehicles, and a Bt636-million budget for overseas inspection.

Yuttapong also questioned the legality of a contract condition that an Austrian ambassador gave his written endorsement that Steyr Daimler Puch was an Austrian company, even after it was taken over by the US firm General Dynamics.

The fire-truck project has been questioned for the inflated price of equipment and vehicles involved. All 350 vehicles were overpriced and could have been manufactured in Thailand at much lower costs.

Yuttapong said the school project also contained similar inflated prices - a 10,000-litre water tank was priced at Bt22 million, although the BMA could obtain it for Bt2 million less, and a 40-seater bus was set at Bt12 million, yet the BMA could buy it for half the price.

Yuttapong said the school project was initiated and approved during the reign of two ministers at the Interior Ministry and he called on incumbent Aree Wongsearaya to "tackle corruption seriously".

DSI director-general Sunai Manomai-udom said he would look carefully into Yuttapong's complaint about the school project and had assigned the case to be initially studied by a deputy who had been probing the fire-truck scandal.