Streetwise: Distilling foreign-travel experience for the national good

One can understand why.

It looks very likely that the government's revenue shortfall will be Bt280 billion or more in the fiscal year. Each overseas trip involves huge costs, largely to cover transportation, accommodation and food. If the trip involves influential persons, like ministers or high-ranking officials, rooms at established hotels are required as well as special dining facilities. The coaches for city commuting must be good ones. All these involve a huge sum.

Sometimes trips are organised not for the national good but to satisfy the travel needs of officials, and probably their spouses.

One reporter recalls a trip a few years ago to Europe with a tourism-related agency. In the group of about 20 there were only three reporters. The rest were officers, senior officials and their spouses. All schedules were subject to change, mainly for shopping convenience. The reporters realised that they were in the group only so that the agency could brand it a press trip.

Poor people may also raise their eyebrows on learning that special dinners are an integral part of an overseas trip. Sometimes this is at the expense of Thai embassies. Pity the poor embassy in Paris, a city most alluring to Thais and where the price tag per head for that special meal can be ¤100 (Bt4,780).

There will be no stripping of luxury on Dhanarak Asset Development's trip to South Africa from Tuesday to Monday to observe the management of the Sun City real-estate complex. The party will include Deputy Finance Minister Pruttichai Damrongrat, his advisers and the working team. During the trip, for which all bills are to be shouldered by the state agency, they are scheduled to tour the administrative capital Pretoria, where they will check into the Sheraton, before heading to Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Earlier this month 54 representatives of the Public Health Ministry attended the World Health Organisation's annual meeting in Geneva, a beautiful Swiss lakeside city where hotel room rates are notoriously pricey. Fifty-four of them must have racked up quite a hefty bill, but of course they had to be there as the WHO discussed the spread of flu.

But then again, without travel one's vision is so narrow. Abhisit should not be agitated by the extra bills, knowing as he does that those incurring them will, some day, distil their experience for the national good.