Session 1
Prime Minister: I’d like to tell you guys that we’ve actually been traveling since last Friday by started at Phra Nakhon Si Ayuttaya province, where so many people are worried about the situation in Bang Ban district since Bang Ban area has naturally been confronting flood crisis every year because of its low-lying area. Earlier, we had been facing the riverbank overflow issue. This is why we asked the General of Royal Irrigation Department to set up water level measurement so that we’d know how much amount of water we can release into Chao Phraya River and that the citizens will be inform about the water evaluation as well. Nakhon Sawan province is also another place, where we install the water level measurement because Nakhon Sawan province is the region that River ping, River Wang, River Yom, and River Nan meet. This is one of the areas we have to carefully observe. For the water level measurement, our main purpose for the installment is to notify people, who live in those areas about the water level whether if the level is in green, yellow, or red. For people who live in other provinces, they can update the current situation from websites or from their smartphones so that they can be more cautious.
Host: This is to apply the technology into the system as much as possible.
Prime Minister: That’s right. The water level measurement station we have at Nakhon Sawan province is called C2, isn’t it?
Mr.Lertviroj: Yes, it is. C2 center will be the first station that can tell us the amount of water that will be flowing down since this is the place, where those 4 rivers meet. If the Prime Minister can recall, the highest level of water that passed C2 center was in 1942 and last year. The water level was slightly different. What was totally different in 1942 and last year was that in 1942, there were no reservoirs or no dams while in the last year, we had it all, reservoirs and dams. Still, this made little difference.
Prime Minister: C2 is the first station we inspect and monitor the water level so that it wouldn’t exceed the capability of Chao Phraya River and the overall system. The next station is in Bang Ban district, Phra Nakhon Si Ayuttaya province that we also measure the water level before the water reach Bangkok area.
Host: How’s the situation in Nakhon Sawan province?
Mr.Lertviroj: The situation is being controlled. Last year we had to release out 4,800 cubic meters of water per second, but today we’re releasing only 1,800 cubic meters of water per second. This is a lot less than before. Now, we’re rushing to release the water at North into the sea as soon as we could since it’s rainy season, there’s chance that hurricane or storm track could occur. This is why we need to be prepared by keeping water levels at a proper height espeacially in the major river areas.
Host: Are you confident with the situation in Bangkok, Pathumthani, and Nonthaburi areas?
Prime Minister: If the drainage system works fine and we don’t release the amount of water more than its ability, then we’re going to be okay. But, if it rains heavily, there might be water overflows the bank sometimes. However, it will drian fast. I believe it will take couple days.
Host: Let’s talk about Sukhothai province about the big news that talked about how the water leaked and flooded the municipality.
Prime Minister: Since we’re working by Single Command Center, the problem was being managed from the first day we were informed. For Sukhothai case, it was exceeding provincial power, so we moved up the case to another level, which is level 3. This is why it has to be taken by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Yongyuth Wichaidit as a commander for this subject.
Mr.Yongyuth: Director of the Center for Prevention and Mitigation commander.
Host: Then, Ministry of Defense will come and join.
Prime Minister: Immediately. What we do is that, for the technique as you have seen before about the use of Big Bag. A day later the province sent officers from department of Irrigation and department of Public-Works to check and change to the screen with rocks inside so that water will be released first before we put in the Big Bag. After the changed, we were able to handle the situation in 3 days. At the same time, department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation has set up the unit to assist the people right away. From my visit today everything is coming to its normal stage, back to rehabilitation stage
Host: How will the rehabilitation be like?
Mr.Yongyuth: We have all that prepared
Host: What about the case in Phitsanulok, some area is flooded
Prime Minister: For Phitsanulok, it is at Phrom Piram and Bang Ragum. I will let the director of department of Irrigation explain. For Bang Ragum, the area has an old bridge in which caught up garbage and broke the bridge. They have it fixed and change it into reinforced concrete
Host: But the ongoing floods in Sukhothai and Phitsanulok, it is because of the Yom river right? As there’s no main dam. The Ping river has Bhumibhol dam, the Wang river has Kew Lom dam and the Nan river has Sirikit dam
Prime Minister: We are looking to comprehensive and sustainable integration. At the beginning, what we are going to do is limit the water quantity. But as you know you can’t force nature, and at the same time we want the people to carry on with their lives. So we are looking at how to enable 2 round per year rice growing for farmers so as to go along with our rice pawn policy. This year we open up rice pawn station in Bang Ragum, so we can make sure they have their incomes, in 4 months to come they will have no trouble when water actually gets in the field
Mr.Worawat: To make cultivation go with nature, before we use in-season and off season field system but this year we open to all farmers to come in with their products at any time, for this year to go with water situation
Host: Alright, the new round is on October 1st, the cabinet is prepared to approve the budget
Prime Minister: Yes, it must go through the cabinet first
Host: Is there any problems when you go down to the mills, because DSI is also on to this case?
Prime Minister: Besides going to see the water situation, I also went to inspect the mills – more like looking at the rice pawn procedures. Ministry of Commerce is screening the agriculture’s representatives so to make this process clean and transparent
Mr.Boonsrong: The component of committee at rice pawn station in the past year consists of 3 people; first is Marketing Organization for Farmers,Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, second is the mill owner and third is farmers. But this year, to increase the level of transparency we have changed the system, adding 2 more farmers in the system while keep the rest the same way and add 1 more police officer
Prime Minister: It is an important point so that we can make sure farmers get their full advantage from the rice pawn. I know many are worried about where the rice is storage so I went and see so to make sure that all the rice is in good condition in which they are. We reminded the department of Commerce to keep everything transparent. More importantly we should make sure that the warehouse is above the water level. The rice is able to be kept for years if we watch the humidity.
Host: In terms of the warehouses, is the government renting from the privates or building the new one?
Mr.Boonsoong: Some of the MOF (Marketing Organization for Farmers)’s warehouses are in the responsibility of Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC). The rests are taken care by the private sector. The MOF and BAAC will provide them the budget for the rent and maintenance cost.
Host: When it comes to the Rice Pledging Project topic, people would think of the corruption. How would you solve this problem?
Mr. Boonsoong: Mrs. Prime Minister already went to check the system with us yesterday. From what we saw, the corruption is actually very difficult to do because there are the officers responsible in every stage. The process has to be approved by the MOF and BAAC so the corruption is nearly impossible .The agriculturists’ information is the hand of the BAAC. Therefore, nobody can claim that they harvest the rice without actually doing it because it can be checked. The BAAC won’t approve the money to them.
Prime Minister: What we are trying to do right now is to crate networking connection among farmer, BAAC, and ministry of agricultural and cooperative. Basically, we would all be better off since the data and information that we gather will be more accurately interpreted.
Host: I suggest, we hold this topic for while since many might get bored. Since flooding seems to be an issue again, I think it would make the show become livelier if we changed the topic to flooding. Lots of improvements have been made but I still doubt whether you are satisfied yet?
Prime Minister: Although lots of improvements have been made, but I’m not satisfied yet. According to the poll, people still felt insecure and I understood. So far, we move much faster as it can be seen in Sukhothai case. Few minutes after the city was flooded, we all knew where to go and soon got all solutions needed. In contrast, last year we were all in a ciaos. In addition, we also applied the concept of forward command, inventing by Dr Plodprasorb. The forward command basically means moving immediately. For a further clarification, we sent all our fleet out immediately to the area that was suffering from flooding, we also divided our fleet into teams so we can be more specialize in area and eventually becomes more efficient. In addition, we also make sure that the amount of budget is enough so that we are ready to afford anything that can improve the situation.
Host: Back to Mr. Worawat. It is clear that water management in the north is not yet been established and it seems like north part of the country is flooding again, especially Phrae suffered the same devastating result as last year. Since it was on your responsibility, do you have any plan or solution to this yet?
Mr. Worawat: Actually water always comes from the north, and by lacking of water management, flooding is likely to come shortly after. Since Phrae is located top of the country, as water runs the same way as ice cream melts when you place it your head, Payao, Phisanulok, phichit, along with others province located under Phrae will be flood consecutively. We came up with some solutions than we hoped would give good results when being put into action. For instance, several camps have been constructed so that we have places for immigration. Water management system is also being developed, and hopes to be completed around 2013.
Prime Minister: We have heard about the issue that occurred long time ago. We already sent some of the problems that people requested to the committee to deal with. However, we still have to take care of this issue systematically along with the water management.
Host: Let’s discuss about Pak Phanang river basin. Is the south considered to be the least developed in terms of water management compare to the others?
Mr. Lerdwirot: Yes
Host: How are we going to take care of this issue?
Mr. Lerdwirot: Nakornsrithammarat province is very lucky. That area used to have plentiful of resource and cultivation. However, later on it faced several problems such as salt water, sour soil and the problem that is considered to be most complex in the ecology. His Majesty King Bhumibol has realized what needed to be done with the area, so his majesty suggested a project of developing Pak Phanang river basin. We can see that nowadays the area has become much more fertile. It can hold over 500,000 Rais of agriculture and there is a clear separation between salted water and freshwater area. In the past, there used to constantly be conflicts between local rice farmers and shrimp farmers. Now, they no longer have that problem all because of his royal kindness. The Prime Minister has just respectfully informed his Majesty to perform the opening ceremony on the past July 7.
Prime Minister: That’s right. We opened all the Watergates on the same day.
Mr. Lertwiroj: 1 of the 5 projects.
Host: Pak Phanang basin project is one of the most important water management projects of the South, isn’t it?
Mr. Lertwiroj: that’s right. There is a phenomenon that there was 5 times more rain than the average in this area during January. But after January until today, the rain has declined and become lower than average which caused the water level in the reservoir to decrease hastily. So the authority needed to use water pumps to pump the water from the reservoir to irrigate to agriculturists. From the information I have now, there are about 150,000 Rais of rice farm that haven’t been harvested, but it should work out just fine if there isn’t any further problem.
Mr. Yongyuth: Let me add something to this. I just happen to be a former governor of Nakhon Si THammarat, so I know there are a lot of conflicts within the local people on issues of rice farms, shrimp farms, fresh water, salted water and conflicts among fishermen of fresh water and seawater. There are a lot of problems, but with the idea of his Majesty, we were able to solve some of these problems. This Watergate is the only agricultural watergate in Thailand that the Royal Irrigation Department devoted the power of making decision when to close or open the gate to the Pak Phanang district governor and all the involving institutes, so that it will reduce conflicts between local people and it did work out a lot. Normally, it’s within the power of Royal Irrigation Department to decide when to close or open agricultural water gate, but we prefer to cooperate with local institutes to be fair in Pak Phanang.
Prime Minister: Actually, there is another issue in the South which is that the rain usually comes fast and also leaves fast because it’s close to the ocean. So we emphasized with the provincial governor that he will need to take fast action in helping the people. He will also need to consider about Southerners’ lifestyle before stationing any centers, so that these centers will best serve the people in the area. Meanwhile, we have given mission for the Royal Irrigation Department and the Water and Flood Management Commission to take care of riverbank problems as well. This would still be another issue that we will need to do more research about how to solve the problem.
I have to say that our primary solution for agricultural products price problem would be keeping the stability of the price. Then in a long run, what we will need to work on is estimating the amount of products, such as rubber, rice or other agricultural products, to see how much we need to consume within the country and how much we will proceed to make more valuable products. Rubber is one of the products that we need to launch more technology and research to find out how to make more value out of it. So we are integrating 3 ministries to work together in the long run which includes Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Industry. We will also have to combine this issue with water management issue to see the relationship between harvest season and water season, then figure out how to make more efficient use of agricultural area, how we can use water nature to benefit agriculture. These are further challenges that the government will need to work on and figure out a long run solution.
Host: We have seen the overall picture of the government’s work in each area, the attempt of installing water level measuring instruments and warning machines for the people, water management that integrate with developing agricultural products prices. Finally, now we are recording this program in Krabi and it is raining in the back. Miss Prime Minister came here to be the leader for promoting Andaman tourism, but right now it is the low season, why are we promoting tourism during this time?
Prime Minister: Actually, there are a lot of beautiful places and attractions in Krabi. We are here to attend the seminar with private and governmental institutes to figure out what we should do to develop tourism, not only in Krabi, but along the overall Andaman seashore. We will set up measurements starting from promoting tourism, developing tourist resources, building roads to facilitate tourists and most importantly taking care of tourists’ security in order to gain their confidence. This is what we need to start working on and it is a part of the seminar we are attending today as well.
Host: Alright. So this is the first part of the program Prime Minister Yingluck Meets the People. The weather is very nice today and we got to hear from many ministers who came to answer our inquiries including water issue, rice pawn, rubber, Southern water basin management, etc. For the coming part, the Minister Boonsong will still be with us to dick deep into the issue of rice pawn. For now, let say thank you to the Prime Minister, Miss Yingluck Shinawatra, Mr. Yongyuth Wichaidit, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Mr. Worawat Ua-apinyakul, Prime Minister's Office Minister, Mr. Nattawut Saikua, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, and lastly, Mr. Lertwiroj Gowattana, the Director of Royal Irrigation Department. Let’s take a break now and we shall come back to continue.