MNRE to give rewards for tip offs on forest fire starters

BANGKOK, Dec 15 (TNA) -- Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Surasak Karnjanarat has come up with an idea to give out rewards to traces of forest fire starters, aiming to use peer pressure to prevent illegal burning of wastes to solve haze problems. Gen Surasak today chaired a meeting to solve haze and forest fire problems in 2017 at the City Hall in the northern province of Nan. He said that the problems of forest fires and haze in 2016 are quite severe, as the country was hit with a long period of drought, luckily, however, various agencies were able to help reduce the occurrence of forest fires by about 20 per cent from the year before. The minister said, for 2017, stricter surveillance must be carried out at national forests and parks, as over 70 per cent of the land in both areas had been devastated by forest fires. He noted that he would like a command unit to be set up in order to directly and immediately handle problems caused by forest fires, in stead of having the City Hall or district office designated as the centre to mitigate such problems. Moreover, the minister has also targeted to give out rewards for clues that would lead to illegal burning of wastes in open areas, as forest fires are usually triggered by humans; inconsideration. He stressed that rewarding the persons who had given the tip offs would be like punishing the wrongdoers by using the society to pressure them to stop the illegal activity. The minister further informed that the government must also beef up surveillance on transboundary haze pollution, particularly haze problems from neighbouring countries like Laos and Myanmar. He said the Thai government has already held talks with its Myanmar counterpart on the issue, where both sides have agreed to joined hands to seriously solve the problem, in which the first ever joint training would be organised between January 22-24, 2017 to carry out joint exercises on how to prevent and put out forest fires, as well as exchange experiences to solve haze problems in Thailand's Chiang Rai province. (TNA)