Thailand - Suffering residences in central Thailand tear down sandbag embankment

Bangkok (The Nation/ANN) - More than 400 people from Nakhon Nayok province in central Thailand tore down a sandbag embankment on tuesday because they said it was to blame for their homes, roadside stalls and farms being under water for more than a month now.

The embankment, they alleged, was constructed to protect the Pathum Thani economic zone at their expense.

"We have lived under 1.5 metres of water for a long time already," 50-year-old resident Ha Wanwang of Nakhon Nayok's Ongkharak district said.

The sandbag embankment was located next to a watergate that regulates the flow to Klong 12 and Rangsit Prayoonsak canals. The watergate is located in Pathum Thani's Thanyaburi district, which is under the jurisdiction of the South Rangsit Irrigation Project.

The project's director Sirichai Chotiksathien tried telling the protesters that it was mainly water from the Pasak Jolasid Dam that was flooding their hometown. However, the locals insisted that they had suffered far too much already and that the embankment had to be dismantled.

Eventually, relevant agencies allowed them to bring down the embankment and lifted the watergate by 40 centimetres. Before the watergate was opened and the embankment brought down, there was a one-metre difference in the levels of klongs 12 and 13.

Meanwhile, all 12 pumps in the main canal, which runs from Pathum Thani's Nakhon Rangsit municipality to Nakhon Nayok, have been turned on to help ease the flooding.

In a separate report, community leaders in Lop Buri's Ban Mi, Tha Wung and Muang Lop Buri districts in central Thailand are calling on the Royal Irrigation Department to close the Bang Chom Si Water Gate and fix the embankment otherwise dozens of villages will become homes of the living dead.

"They will have nothing left. Their houses, their farms and their properties will all be gone," Kittisak Supapong warned yesterday in his capacity as leader of the association of Ban Mi-based village chiefs.

These three Lop Buri districts are heavily flooded with water levels in some areas a few metres high.

According to the Thai Emergency Operations Centre for Flood, Storm and Landslides, flooding has continued to wreak havoc in 23 provinces. To date, 166 people have died and three are still missing. It is estimated that more than 6.15 million rai of farmland has been damaged so far.

Thailand's Meteorological Department, meanwhile, reported that although Tropical Storm Haitang had already been downgraded, it has caused heavy downpours in the Northeast.

As of press time, many provinces in the Northeast including Chaiyaphum and Kalasin were already flooded. At Kalasin's Lampao wildlife conservation centre, the zoo zone has been closed and animals have been evacuated to higher ground.

In Chaiyaphum, most of the districts have already been declared disaster-hit zones.

An informed source disclosed that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra had told her Cabinet yesterday that His Majesty was offering moral support and had instructed the authorities to ease people's woes.

His Majesty granted Yingluck an audience on Monday.

By News Desk in Bangkok/The Nation | ANN

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