First to register, at 8:30am, was Bhumjaithai Party candidate Jirayus Songyos, who will contest Phuket Constituency 2. The second applicant was Pheu Thai Party candidate Wisit Jai-arj, who will run in Constituency 1. He was followed by Pheu Thai Constituency 2 candidate Saman Kebsap.

Only two supporters were allowed to escort the applicants inside the PEC office, which left hundreds of supporters to cheer for them outside the building.

By about 9:30am, all three candidates had completed registering and then paid courtesy calls on government officials working at Provincial Hall, presenting them with campaign leaflets.

Expected to register when the office reopens tomorrow morning are Anchalee Vanich Thepabutr and Raewat Areerob of the Democrat Party.

News by Phuket Gazette.

At 10 a.m. in the morning, people formed a line along the streets of the two village waiting for the water truck to arrive and fill their 10-liter plastic container so they could get through the day.

Mrs Jintana Wisetratone, one of the approximately 1,500 residents of the two communities, said local authorities made no effort to announce that a service disruption of such length was coming.

The 64-year-old said she never thought such a thing could happen in Phuket and wanted to publicize the community’s plight through the media. Residents had to shower at their places of employment and there was no water to wash dishes and cutlery after meals, she said this morning. She said she was forced to buy 10 ten-liter containers of drinking water at a cost of over 100 baht per day just to get by.

“I have no idea why the water stopped. No government officials have been round to explain what is going on,” she said.

Residents were so frustrated with the situation made some of them sarcastically put “For Sale” signs up in front of their homes. They also tried to call the offices of the Provincial Waterworks Authority, located at Bang Wad Reservoir just two kilometers away, but nobody there answers the phone, they complained.

After receiving the complaint, the Gazette contacted Phuket Provincial Waterworks Authority Manager Sayan Wareearoonroj. He assured the Gazette that service was restored in the area this afternoon. The service disruption started on Monday and was required in order to hook up new water mains to the distribution network, according to a press release issued late last week.

However, the press release failed to mention how long the shortage would last and didn’t specifically list the 550 households of Baan Neua and Moo Baan Pak Dee as among the communities that would be affected.

News by Phuket Gazette

Phuket Provincial Police on August 11 dispatched a team of officers to the northeastern province of Nong Khai to observe a drug detection unit in action at a border checkpoint there. Effective or not, costs of installation and upkeep are prohibitive, the committee was told. It would cost about 250 million baht for one unit, with monthly maintenance fees of about one million baht.

“The price is just too high. It is not worth the investment, so the province will have to come up with alternative strategies,” the governor said.

Despite its relatively small size, Phuket ranked third in reported drug cases in the six provinces covered by Police Region 8. Surat Thani and Nakhon Sri Thammarat took the top two spots, respectively. According to the Police Region 8 Narcotics Control Center, Phuket had 2,230 drug cases with 2,431 arrests from October last year through June this year.

News by Phuket Gazette

While holiday flights are still coming to Phuket, Khun Korn heard today that forward bookings for May are at 12 percent and for June at 19 percent. Normally they would both be at 50 percent at this time.

Developer and long-term Phuket expat resident Paul Moorhouse told Khun Korn in a direct manner about the tuk-tuk rip-offs and the lack of trained beach guards, and the fact that many essential aspects of life on Phuket for residents and tourists alike fail to measure up to international standards. Khun Korn directed Phuket Governor Wichai Praisa-ngob to solve the problems, a task both men must surely recognize as easier said than done.

The main objective, though, of the meeting involving Khun Korn and 40 Phuket business leaders at the Hilton Phuket Arcadia Resort and Spa was to offer constructive ideas for the recovery of tourism. Mathee Tanmanatragul, immediate past-president of the southern chapter of the Thai Hotels Association, told Phuketwan after the meeting said that Phuket was like the eldest son in a family struck down by illness: the island needs the whole nation’s support to act as bread-winner until the rest of the family recovers.

”Don’t make it all disappear,” Khun Mathee said Khun Korn was told.

He said it is to be hoped that Khun Korn goes back to Bangkok and makes the case for Phuket to be given the lion’s share of the recovery budget of 1.6 billion baht that will become available to help tourism recover quickly – once the crisis ends.

”Let Phuket and the Andaman do the work,” Khun Mathee said. ”We know the problem best and we know how to solve it best.

”The road to recovery this time will not be as short as last time,” Khun Mathee said. While the 2008 invasion of Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok was damaging, he said, the level of travel advisories then was much lower and not so difficult to overcome.

”This time the adverse travel advisories are stronger and from more than 40 countries, including a lot of our biggest supporters,” Khun Mathee said.

The road back had become ”fearsome” because of the deaths and injuries in Bangkok and the prospect of continued conflict, with no end in sight. ”The government doesn’t seem to have the right formula,” he said.

Above all, Phuket needed desperately to maintain its precious direct flights. ”If we don’t do something, they will go somewhere else,” he said. ”It will be up to the consumer to decide.”

He said there was no question of divorcing Phuket from Thailand. But Phuket, because it remained the safest and most secure destination in the country, could and should certainly lead the recovery of all of Thailand.

Khun Korn is on a flight from Phuket back to Bangkok at 8pm.

News by Phuket Wan

From July 1st this year, police say, any motorcyclist or passenger caught riding without a helmet will be fined.

According to the UK-based ‘motorcycle community’ website visordown.com, the decision was taken to make helmet use compulsory in order to reduce the number of riders killed or seriously injured on the roads.

It was not immediately clear why the compulsory wearing of a helmet is considered a “new” law, as the helmet law was introduced in Phuket in 1996. What could be “new”, however, would be any enforcement of that law, which has been widely scoffed at over the past 14 years.

News by Phuket Gazette

The west coast of Phuket maybe the best representation of developments in the island. Along the coast with majestic vistas, between Karon and Patong, there is a newly completed road hiking up to a palatial construction of Centara Grand, a luxury five-star-plus resort with 262 rooms sets to open in the next high season. The 1.9 billion Baht investment reflects how promising Phuket’s future is.

Phuket has been seeing the up and down before and after tsunami and both international and Thai brands have been continuously seeing medium and long term benefits on investments in Phuket. But the night when political protest turned to become a horrible bloodshed brought a huge question mark to the continuation of those investments.

The incident severely damaged Thailand social and political stability. The image of Thailand has been changed into a destination tainted by spilled blood of civilians, soldiers, even foreigner.

On Nai Harn beach there is a magnificent resort property The Phuket Yacht Club Puravarna which is already put to the market for sale. The incident in Bangkok definitely hit the seller as property market is inevitably affected, in which situation confidence on getting expected return fades away.

Learning from the picture when Tsunami hit the region back in 2004, significant disaster took a while to unfold, and even longer to recover. Tourists who have been in Phuket when the tsunami swept the continued their stay. They did not pack up and left in a hurry. But will they come back or will others come along are completely different question. Protests started back in March 12th does not show any signs of compromise resulting in escalating level of uncertainty. People may have booked and paid their holiday for April so they may still come. But beyond that bookings may get evaporated.

Tourism facility operators may promote the fact that Phuket is far away from Bangkok, but if government fall and the country runs into chaos, offering discounts are not going to attract tourists. News reported that five star brands have already offering significant discount.

Police Lieutenant General Tha-ngai Prasajaksatru, commander of ECOTEC, said that the raid at CAT Tower yesterday focused on the Internet data center and was in response to a radical pro-Thaksin supporter accessing the server to instigate political violence.

Lieutenant General Tha-nga said that on February 26, Pornwat Thongsomboon, widely known as ‘K. Thong’, accessed a chat room titled ‘Voice of Change’ and posted a video clip issuing a bomb threat and stated, “The civil war has commenced”. The video also urged investors to withdraw their investments from the stock market.

The day after the message was posted, four Bangkok Bank branches in the national capital were attacked with hand grenades, followed by a further series of bomb attacks on banks in the southern province of Narathiwat on Tuesday.

Lieutenant General Tha-nga said the message was intended to damage national security and create social unrest, which is a violation of the Computer Crimes Act.

He said the contents of the confiscated server will be inspected by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in an attempt to identify the IP address of K. Thong or any other people posting items in breach of the Computer Crimes Act.

Meanwhile, in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court verdict finding Thaksin guilty of abuse of power, there have been no protests, demonstrations or other potentially damaging activities by any political groups in Phuket or most of the rest of Thailand.

News by Phuket Gazette

The mysterious felling of eight pine trees near the West Sands resort project in Mai Khao has undergone police investigation still it does not produce any suspect. Members of a panel set up to investigate the matter met at Phuket Provincial Hall on Wednesday to discuss developments in the case. The felling of the ‘ton son’ pine trees caused local residents to set up a roadblock and issue a number of demands to the provincial government in early December.

Wednesday meeting chaired by Phuket Deputy Governor, (Palad) Chaiwat Tephee. Also attending were Phuket Provincial Land Office chief Phaitoon Lertkrai, Thalang District Land Office Chief Somboon Santi-Amontat, two Thai representatives of the West Sands development company, Mai Khao Village 4 Headman Manoch Saithong and Sirinart National Park deputy director Wichart Pankong.

Although the party responsible for felling the trees by chainsaw remains at-large, Tah Chat Chai District police are still questioning suspects in the case, the committee was told.

Several of the villagers’ other demands have been successfully addressed, the panel learned.

Mr Manoch said villagers feared the resort would restrict the use of a six-meter-wide stretch of road that runs for 550 meters along the beachfront, near where the pine trees were felled.

“Some sections of that road now belong to West Sands. Though we have never had access problems in the past, we were afraid they would restrict access in the future. So we asked that they agree to designate that road as open to the public, and they have already signed a document to that effect,” he said.

In another development, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by West Sands management and Sirinart National Park has been scrapped.

Sirinart National Park chief Nonthawit Jaturabandit said the hotel had been informed that the document was declared null and void a week after the protest, as demanded by the protesters.

Land Department lawyers have also been asked to review the terms of the document to see what obligations to the park it contains. The scrapping follows the recommendation of a Senate panel that came to investigate the case in December. As with many land disputes in Phuket, poorly delineated boundary lines are a key issue.

Phuket Land Department officials and the West Sands management are reviewing all the land title deeds and related documents and will meet at the site on Tuesday to agree upon and mark out the exact boundary between park land and resort property, the panel was told.

The West Sands case is only the latest in a number of disputes between resort developers and local residents over land rights in coastal areas of Phuket. In some cases, including the stretch of Bang Tao Bay in front of Laguna Beach Resort in Cherng Talay, local residents continue to run small beach businesses that block sea views for resort guests and offer tourists much cheaper food and beverage services than those offered by the resort.

News by Phuket Gazette

Memorandum of Understanding that is an agreement to charge the constumers for plastic bag is agreed to be done by several retailers in Phuket. Among them, Tesco-Lotus and 7-Eleven remain among the few major of Phuket retailers yet to sign an agreement to begin charging customers a nominal fee for plastic bags. The memorandum was announced during a meeting at Phuket Provincial Hall on Friday, chaired by Phuket Vice Gov Teerayut Eimtrakul and three of the project leaders, was attended by representatives of island retailers that have already signed on.

Villa Market is the latest Phuket retailer to sign the MOU agreeing to charge customers for plastic bags: two baht for plastic bags over five liters in volume and one baht for smaller ones.

Phuket Energy Office Director Jirasuk Tummawetch said he was pleased Villa Market signed on voluntarily, without a request from his office.

Store manager Udom Chiangyos said, “We signed the MOU ourselves because we always campaign for reduction in the number of plastic bags. We have always produced cloth bags and made them available to our customers, but not many bring them back when they come shopping again…. I admit that a lot of plastic bags are used in the supermarket. I think this scheme will be good for Phuket.”

It is understood that Villa Market is independently planning to start charging customers at its branches in Bangkok for plastic bags.

Villa Market’s addition to the MOU increases to 24 the number of retailers who have signed up thus far are:
Big C; Robinson Ocean; Robinson Ocean Jungceylon; Robinson Ocean Central; Ocean Shopping Mall Phuket; Ocean Plaza Patong; Big One; Supercheap; Siam Family Mart; Phuket Grocery; Index Living Mall; SB Furniture; 108 Shops; CP Fresh Mart; Central Festival; Central Department Store; Power Buy; Super Sport; B2S; Office Depot; Tops Supermarket; HomeWorks; Jungceylon; Villa Market.

HomePro and the Premium Outlet Mall are expected to sign soon. Meanwhile, Tesco-Lotus, Carrefour and 7-Eleven have yet to sign on.

The Gazette understands that Carrefour is carefully considering signing the MOU, but first wants to see what action Tesco-Lotus takes. Project leader Nick Anthony said there was no reason for the retailers not to go along with the project. Having all the retailers on board for the project launch would give it additional strength on launch day, he said.

Organizers attended a three-hour meeting this morning to discuss preparations that will feature a three-day launch exhibit February 13 to 15 at Central Festival Phuket. Some 40 to 50 organizations are expected to take part.

The Phuket Provincial Office will issue a press release soon, listing all retailers who have yet to sign the MOU, he said. It will get the formal launch on February 14 with a speech by Phuket Governor Preecha Phraisa-ngop. The organizers hope that the plastic bag charge will lead to a reduction in the number of plastic bags entering the waste stream and needing to be ‘landfilled’ behind the incinerator at Saphan Hin, where the pile of garbage continues to increase at a rate of about 300 hundred tonnes daily. They also hope it will be the first in a number of steps aimed at reducing the amount of solid waste at the source and promoting re-use and recycling.

News by PhuketGazette

From Sunday, November 1, it will not be possible to do the paperwork required for re-entry permits at Phuket International Airport.

News of the change comes as 10.3 million baht is being spent to upgrade the Immigration counter facilities at the airport. Eight more stations are to be added for arrivals, taking the total to 30, and two more for departures, taking the total to 20, completed by March.

The re-entry permit change is taking place to free up more Immigration officers to speedily process the tourist arrivals on Phuket during the high season.

Multiple re-entry permits will be available from the Phuket Town HQ at 3800 baht, while a single-entry permit will cost 1000 baht. A tourist on a 60-day permit, for example, who wished to visit other countries in that time using Phuket as a base, would be required to pay the same scale of fees.

Expats who travel without arranging re-entry in advance may have to settle for a stamp that entitles them to stay for a month or 15 days, and require an upgrade at Immigration HQ in Phuket Town.

The system for obtaining and renewing visas remains unchanged.

Written by Chutima Sidasathian
Published on Phuket Wan – http://phuketwan.com/