Marine officials protest against their director general

Led by deputy director general Wichit Pattanawisai, the officials submitted a letter of protest along with a petition signed by 676 department employees to Natural Resources and Environment permanent secretary Saksit Tridech.

The protesters claimed that director general Nisakorn Kositratna, 's management style was not acceptable and her administrative policies created conflict with other senior officials.

Nisakorn responded by saying she felt disheartened by the protest because she had been trying to solve work-related problems during her one-year tenure at the post.

She acknowledged that some of her decisions had upset staff, but insisted everything she had done had been in the interests of the department.

After consulting with Natural Resources and Environment Acting Minister Yongyuth Yuthavong, Saksit said the ministry understood the problem and would try to promote reconciliation between the two sides. He said he would try and resolve the situation within the next two days. "There's no need for an investigation. I think the issue stemmed from miscommunication in the work setting, thus should be sorted out by discussions together," he said.

The protesters yesterday handed out a 17point list of their grievances against Nisakorn to reporters. They blamed her for suspending the Bt30million budget for this year's project to mark Her Majesty the Queen's 72nd birthday, which they said caused the project to fail.

Another grievance was the allocation of Bt2 million to consultants to review the draft Marine and Coastal Resources Management Promotion Act, a draft bill that the protesters said had already been finished. Nisakorn was also taken to task for general restructuring orders that created many different subsections within the department, purportedly causing confusion and conflicts among staff.

An anonymous source at the Marine and Coastal Resources Department said Nisakorn's performance was unacceptable to many officials, particularly in light of administrative mistakes that had caused projects worth hundreds of millions of baht to fail. The source said hiring outside consultants to do work that could have been done within the department was a waste of resources, and the disgruntled officials had asked the AuditorGeneral and the National Counter Corruption Commission to investigate.