Cabinet to appoint joint panel to look into issues; PM calls for mutual accommodation; Sophon puts up spirited defence, blames vacation home owners for the controversy
The Cabinet yesterday suspended the controversial expansion of a road cutting through Khao Yai National Park in Nakhon Ratchasima province for the remaining eight kilometres.
A joint investigation by the Transport Ministry, which had implemented the road-expansion project, and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, which regulates forest areas, will begin once an independent committee is set up.
Speaking after the Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said he would assign Deputy Prime Minister Korbsak Sabhavasu to find members to serve on the panel, including officials of the Office of the National Environment Board.
Both ministries have been assigned to work out a joint plan
to restore roadside areas that
had been dredged to make way for the two-lane expansion of the
two-lane, 23.7-kilometre Thanarat Road.
A further expansion from kilometre markers 10-16 has been suspended officially after work was almost completed from markers 2-8.
The Cabinet has also assigned both ministries to study legal obstacles or loopholes regarding similar problems for any future road-expansion projects, especially since it was very likely that large trees were felled under existing regulations.
Abhisit said the Transport Ministry would need to be more careful when it came to felling large trees, while the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry would need to readjust certain rules or impose environmental-impact assessments on other relevant government agencies.
Abhisit called a private meeting with Transport Minister Sophon Saram and Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti in his office prior to the Cabinet meeting, in order to discuss undisclosed issues.
During the Cabinet meeting, an emotional Sophon said suspension of the Thanarat Road expansion project could affect a few other expansion projects elsewhere that were awaiting implementation.
He also criticised activists and others opposing the Thanarat Road expansion project, saying: "These people are residents of the capital who visit vacation homes in Khao Yai once a year, while people who need the wider road are local re-sidents. A public hearing was
conducted and approved by the locals, but people who never participated now come out to oppose the project."
Suwit is reported to have scarcely made any comments and did not respond directly to Sophon's remarks during the 40-minute discussion about the project at the Cabinet meeting, only citing his concern about the environmental impact.
After the Cabinet meeting, Suwit told a press interview he was considering seeking World Heritage Site status for areas around Khao Yai National Park, including around Thanarat Road, in order to impose stricter environment laws there.
He insisted his ministry would continue legal action against the Highways Department, who implemented the road expansion, for felling trees before getting ministry permission.
He said the Forestry Industry Organisation, which was hired by the Highways Department to cut down the trees and make use of them commercially, told him the trees were already cut down when FIO officials entered the project site.
Deputy Interior Minister and deputy Bhum Jai Thai Party leader Bunjong Wongtrairat said he did not think the Thanarat Road expansion project was part of an internal rift among the coalition, between his party and the Social Action Party, which Suwit leads.
"Neither was this matter a mistake by Sophon," a fellow Bhum Jai Thai member, he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Sanan Kachornprasart said the matter was not a big deal and should be mediated by the prime minister.
Greenpeace Thailand said the Highways Department's public hearing was carried out in only three hours' time, with the participants mostly government officials and community leaders supporting the project.