The Senate committee on human rights and consumer protection will ask for an inde¬pendent panel to be set up to resolve environmental and health problems in Map Ta Phut industrial area, panel chairman Senator Prasarn Maruekhapitak said yesterday.
The panel would be made up of representatives from various stakeholders including civil society, government officials, academia, the industrial estate and the media.
The panel would study root causes of pollution problems and find durable solutions to alleviate concerns about the economy, investment, good governance, maintaining the environment, and the quality of local people's lives.
"The process to study this will take two months and then we will propose ways to the gov¬ernment to resolve and manage problems. It will be a model approach that can be standard for other areas, such as Prachuap Khiri Khan's Bang Saphan district, Udon Thani and Saraburi," he said.
The move comes after a group of 50 Rayong residents, who say they are fighting for their health, embarked on a walk from Map Ta Phut to Bangkok. They then petitioned the Speaker of the Senate to investigate the government's alleged failure to abide by pro¬visions in the Constitution.
Rayong villagers staged a demonstration at Parliament. They brought shells and water contaminated with hazardous substances to show senators.
Group coordinator Suthi Atchasai and patients suffering eye socket cancer and allergies submitted a petition on behalf of local residents to Senate Speaker Prasopsuk Boondej.
Prasopsuk said the Constitution protected people affected by pollution and that Senators would speed up their work as soon as possible.
"Please trust in what we are doing right now," he said.
Prasarn said he believed it would take about six months for the government to finish draft¬ing an environmental bill in relation to their complaints. Meanwhile, the local commu¬nity continued to be affected by pollution released by factories at Map Ta Phut.
Members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) led by Pipop Thongchai and other "yellow shirts" who were demonstrating nearby said the government never paid any attention to the environmental and health protection.
"The government sufficien¬cy policy and commitments to follow the Constitution - it's just words that they never imple¬ment," he said.
The government feared the country could lose up to Bt400 billion in investments due to the Administrative Court verdict which designated Map Ta Phut as a pollution control zone. But Pipop said that was a problem for investors, not the country.
Director of East Hemaraj (Map Ta Phut) Industrial Estate Office, Veerasak Permpaengphan, has called for a clear man¬date and rules to force compa¬nies in the estate to adhere to an environmental protection plan.
"It would be a risk for the authority to face lawsuits from the private sector if we don't have clear answers for them about the law, so we can force them to follow [the law]."
Another office director, Peeravatanna Rungraungsri, said Map Ta Phut had set up an Environmental Monitoring and Control Centre - worth Bt200 million - to monitor the quali¬ty of air and water to reduce emissions and cut the impact of pollution on local residents.
In the event of accidents, it would send a rapid mobile unit to try to stop leaks of chemical substances immediately to limit air contamination, and wastewater would be treated before release to a local reservoir.
The agency had set up dis¬play boards in the nearby com¬munity to show the level of chemical substances being released in industrial areas, such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
Peeravatanna attacked a study conducted by Global Community Monitor (GCM) - a nongovernment group based in the US, which said "realtime" monitoring equipment showed chemicals 1Butadiene and and 3Butadiene were at 27 times the acceptable limits in Map Ta Phut.
"The method that they use to measure the quality of air in Map Ta Phut is not acceptable for us. They measure in the 'realtime' but it was just a fig¬ure at that moment, not for a whole year," he said.
"We want an independent and reliable body to evaluate pollution inside this industrial area. Then we will accept a study conducted by that body."
Moreover, he said since the Administrative Court put fur¬ther projects in Map Ta Phut and Ban Chang industrial areas on hold, no firms had withdrawn investment and moved to other countries because they had confidence in Thailand's capacity to develop industry.