Milk deal turns sour

The threat followed complaints about delivery of the wrong products and spoiled goods.

"We'll launch a probe. If the supplier is found guilty of wrongdoing, we'll cancel the contract immediately," said Tambon Wang Man Administrative Organisation chairman Sukrit Bunkamut.

His organisation signed a contract with Country Fresh Dairy to deliver pasteurised milk to five schools in the tambon.

Two of them complained about the products. A fouryearold kindergarten student also suffered from diarrhoea after drinking a UHT milk packet.

"I don't know why pasteurised milk was not delivered on Thursday," Tambon Wang Man Kindergarten principal Chalermkwan Budtanthong said yesterday.

"We normally receive pasteurised milk."

Chalermkwan said he also discovered a box that had gone bad and threw it away.

Baan Takham Wang Nam School director Rattana Wasuleewan said his school found three suspicious milk boxes and 10 suspicious milk packets.

"These items were UHT. We ordered pasteurised milk," he said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Interior Minister Boonjong Wongtrairat said local administrative bodies had a duty to purchase goodquality milk for young children.

In a bid to boost children's development, the government has allocated Bt12 billion to provide free milk to students at their schools.

"If something goes wrong, the committee responsible for getting the milk to the schools should be able to nail down the wrongdoers easily," Boonjong said.

Sitting on the committee are representatives of local administrative bodies, teachers and parents.

This fresh scandal involving school milk erupted after a school in Chumphon publicly complained about the poor quality of milk sent to it earlier this week.

Tharit Pengdit, secretarygeneral of the Office of the Public Sector AntiCorruption Commission, said his people had already looked into the Chumphon milk case.

"Based on available records, we suspect there's something wrong with the bidding process, because only two suppliers tendered bids for the right to deliver milk to schools, when at least 18 bidders were required," Tharit said.

He added that he planned to set up an adhoc committee to investigate further.