Thai PM announces water management master plan 2012

BANGKOK, January 20 (TNA) - Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra publicly announced on Friday Thailand's 18.11-billion-baht master plan on water management for 2012, focusing on flood prevention systems and joint efforts to speed up water drainage. Yingluck said that the country's flooding crisis late last year affected more than 400,000 households and about one million workers, with some 676 flood-related fatalities and 1.42-trillion-baht damage, and that her government's new water management master plan for this year, therefore, focuses on effective flood prevention systems, flood prevention confidence among communities, farmers and industrialists and joint efforts of all parties to speed up water drainage into the sea. According to the Thai premier, reforestations and the construction of new dams will also be done to slow down upstream flood flows; while floodways will be developed in the country's central region as well to accelerate the water drainage into the sea. Premier Yingluck also acknowledged that more dykes, sluice gates and pump stations will also be built to protect Thai industrial zones and her government will offer soft loans to flood-affected industrial sites for their rehabilitation and raise a 50-billion-baht disaster insurance fund to boost confidence among industrialists. (TNA)