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SOUTHERN VIOLENCE:
Scared teachers to be issued firearms
Published on July 06, 2005
The Education Ministry will buy 2,000 pistols to arm teachers in the three southern border provinces so that they can better defend themselves, the deputy education minister said yesterday.
Rung Kaewdaeng said the ministry had surveyed teachers in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat and found that some 2,000 of them wanted to be issued guns to protect themselves.
He said the purchase would be carried out through the welfare system of the Interior Ministry and the teachers would be charged Bt45,000 each and could borrow money from teachers cooperatives to buy the guns.
If more teachers request guns to defend themselves, the ministry will organise a purchase of second-hand pistols for them, Rung said.
In the case of teachers who can’t afford to purchase their own guns, the government would lend them military weapons, he said.
The deputy education minister said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra totally supported the idea of training teachers to be able to use guns to defend themselves.
Rung said statistics showed most people were not killed by the first shots fired from a gun, so if potential victims were able to fire back against the assailants, they might have a better chance at survival.
“So I believe that guns are essential for boosting teachers’ morale,” Rung said.
He said the Defence and Interior ministries had admitted that security officials could not protect teachers all the time so the Interior Ministry had no opposition to the teachers carrying guns.
Rung said that so far 24 teachers had been killed since January 4 last year.
But Prasit Meksuwan, a representative of teachers’ groups in the three provinces, said he was against the measure to arm teachers.
“The measure is like the government supporting the use of violence. This should be a private matter instead of being discussed in the public as a state policy,” Prasit said.
A senior Marine officer, Captain Anucha Naktaptip, said yesterday that the ongoing violence in the deep South had prompted more people to get firearms training.
Anucha said the firing ground inside his Marine Corps 3 base in Narathiwat’s Muang district had seen a lot of people, including businessmen and government officials, coming to practise shooting over the weekends.
Another measure being used to boost teachers’ morale is to allow non-local teachers to be transferred out of the three provinces.
Rung said the transfer requests would be approved in seven days and he would hire local people to work as temporary teachers to make up for those who were transferred.
Teachers who are Thai nationals but teach outside of their home district would also be allowed transfers to schools near their home, he said.
Rung added that he would not be adopting Interior Minister Chidchai Vanasatidya’s proposal to move schools from remote areas into towns.
Meanwhile, Sa-nguan Inthalak, secretary-general of the Narathiwat Teachers Federation, said so far 1,161 teachers had been granted transfers out of Narathiwat during the past year. He said 1,214 other teachers were still awaiting approval of transfer requests.
After the shooting death of director Kobkul Ransewa at Ban Tuakor School in Narathiwat’s Chanae district yesterday - the first day that the school was reopened - 10 of the 13 teachers requested transfers.
Adul Promsaeng, deputy director of the school, said the three remaining teachers were local people so they had opted to remain teaching local kids. |
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