The Nation
January 29, 2003

Department chief transferred over contract.

The head of the environmental Quality Promotion Department was transferred to inactive duties yesterday after a national committee found irregularities in the draft contract for the Klong Dan wastewater treatment plant in Samut Prakan.

Prapat Panyachatraksa, Natural Resources and Environment Minister, said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who ordered the panel to look into the controversial project,
approved the transfer of department director-general Sirithan Pairotboriboon.

Sirithan, the former director-general of the Pollution Control Department (PCD), which owns the project, was transferred to the Prime Minister Office’s to pave the way for further investigation into the project in Bang Bo district.

The Bt30-billion project, one-third paid for by the Asian Development Bank, is reportedly fraught with corruption and irregularities involving bidding, the acquisition of land and environmental problems.

Local people and many businesses operating in the area oppose the plant, which was originally due to open by the end of 2002.

Although work is almost complete, doubts have arisen that it will ever begin operations.

The PCD never conducted an environmental impact assessment study, saying it was unnecessary and that the project would actually solve the problem of pollutants discharged by factories.

The agency has been trying to convince factories to use the system, thereby contributing revenues to run the operation.

According to the PCD, factories would provide most of the income for the project by paying a treatment fee of Bt10-15 per cubic metre.

However, most of the 5,000 factories in the province already have their own wastewater treatment systems.

As it is, most do not use them because they do not want to spend any money on waste treatment.

Prapat said the deputy director-general of the Environmental Quality Promotion Department would take over as caretaker director-general.