Thailand - South lacks civil defence volunteers

Civil defence volunteers are being recruited and mobilised in the deep South to take over for soldiers and marines who will soon return home.

The number of the volunteers is still not sufficient, but they can take over on a smaller scale, Jaran Khayan, director of the Provincial Administration Department’s Territorial Defence Volunteer Division, said during an inspection visit in Pattani yesterday.

Initial deployment has been organised at the tambon level, while the recruitment is underway for more volunteers. Deployment would be rolled out in phases beginning this year.

The government had initiated a policy to replace troops with volunteers and some of the Army’s new paramilitary rangers.

A Cabinet resolution to raise the daily wage for volunteers from Bt55 to Bt120, which is the same rate paid to rangers, had boosted the volunteers’ morale.

Civil defence volunteers would serve well because they were recruited from local communities and would be well accepted and well liked by them, he added.

The Defence Council is considering whether the four villagers killed by mistake in Pattani in January would be entitled to receive Bt7 million compensation each, Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Thanathip Sawangsaeng said.

Relatives of the four slain villagers have already received Bt500,000 and would get an extra Bt7 million depending on whether they would be qualified like the red shirts who were killed during their violent protest in Bangkok in May two years ago, he said.

A villager wounded in a bomb attack in Narathiwat near a railway bridge on Wednesday died yesterday at a hospital, while the mother of Somchai Thajun, a ranger who was killed in the blast, was given money from the Army during a full military funeral held at a temple in Muang district.

The Nation

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