Thailand's Caretaker PM performs duties in provincial areas

SARABURI, THAILAND, February 24 (TNA) - Thailand's Caretaker Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra performs her duties in provincial areas although anti-government protesters have vowed to chase her everywhere for a week. Accompanied by Caretaker Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt, Caretaker Deputy Education Minister Sermsak Pongpanich and deputy secretary-general to the prime minister Police Major General Thawat Boonfuang, Yingluck visited Saraburi Province in the central region on Monday to inspect a project on expanding a center for local community products there. Although the anti-government People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) has vowed to chase her everywhere, security measures for the caretaker prime minister remains normal and she kept smiling during her inspection trip. The caretaker prime minister told concerned officials to build local product centers by highways in all provinces to help raise incomes of local people, insisting that her government would quickly solve problems of farmers and the general public. Meanwhile, Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha cancelled his presence at an event to commemorate the establishment of the Special Warfare Command in the central Lop Buri Province to monitor the updated situation, after recent fatal attacks at anti-government demonstration venues in Bangkok and Trat Province in the Thai East. Police Captain Chalerm Yubamrung, Director of the government's Center for Maintaining Peace and Order (CMPO), who is also Caretaker Labor Minister, said the recent fatal attacks were the acts of groups which want to overthrow and frame the government. Police Captain Chalerm stressed that the government did not support violence and would not crack down on protesters, urging PDRC secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime minister of the Democrat Party, to end his anti-government protests to stop violence from growing. (TNA)