Following up on their earlier vow to rally over a land-lease dispute, some 400 palm-plantation workers in Surat Thani yesterday
surrounded a state-owned plantation in Pun Pin district to demand they be allowed to negotiate a rental contract for the area.
The group started entering the 4,181-rai site on Sunday evening, as they had been threatening to do since last week if they were not able to negotiate leases with provincial authorities by then. Provincial governor Damri Bunjing said he would be happy to meet them again on Wednesday because he was in Bangkok on business yesterday.
The protestors did not hold simultaneous rallies throughout the province as promised, nor did they enter the provincial airport while voicing allegations that the 4,181-rai plot had been rented out to financiers who did not pay any return to the authorities.
Protest leader Chakhrit Sriphirommit said the rental contract on the land, 40 per cent of a 10,560-rai area, had expired on January 28 as per a Cabinet decision five years ago, but the provincial authorities were slow in reclaiming the land and renting it out to farmers.
He said the protestors had the right to rent the land after the financiers' contract had expired because they had provided the deposit that the provincial authorities had asked for several months ago.
