Public hearings to be held for Thailand's water management plan

BANGKOK, August 18 (TNA) - The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, through a water development and management sub-committee, will hold public hearings in Thailand's northern, central and eastern regions to gather information for rewriting the country's water management plan before submitting it to the army-led National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) in early October 2014. The ministry's first sub-committee discussed the organization of the public hearings with irrigation officials from the regions in Bangkok on Monday to discuss and prepare public hearings in the areas. In the Thai North, the public hearings will be held in Chiang Mai Province on September 8 and in Phitsanulok Province on September 9. In the Central region, the public hearings will be held in Ayutthaya Province on September 10 and in Phetchaburi Province on September 11. In the Thai East, a public hearing will be organized in Rayong Province on September 12. Deputy Permanent Secretary for Agriculture and Cooperatives Lersak Rewtrakulpaiboon told journalists on Monday, meanwhile, that the public hearings will take about a month and focused on gathering problems, limitations and solutions from local stake holders, with the gathered information to be then used to design the first sub-committee's water management plan. Lersak acknowledged that the plan will reflect rough water management for river basins in the country's northern, central and eastern regions, which will serve locals' needs and relevant projects will later be designed to meet the local demands. According to the senior official, the process will be different from the past, when projects were designed before public hearings, which caused misunderstanding and blocked the implementation of many projects. The senior official stated that the new approach is believed to convince local people to support many projects of his ministry's Royal Irrigation Department because they have their says. The water management plan to be developed from the public hearings will be reported to Thailand's main water management committee, headed by a deputy NCPO chief supervising economic affairs, General Chatchai Sarikalya. The plan will then be integrated with plans of the ministry's four other sub-committees to make a national master plan on water management. (TNA)