Drowning in flood misinformation

Postbag

Published: 8/01/2012 at 03:02 AM
Newspaper section: News

The letter printed in last Tuesday's ''PostBag'' by Burin Kantabutra was very informative. It read in part: ''Government-sponsored coverage doesn't solve the problem at its root, and leaves vast sectors of the economy vulnerable. ''The problem is that international insurers don't believe that we will effectively address the problem of flooding, which our Irrigation Department warns may happen again at the same magnitude in 2012.''

Exactly.

How can the Yingluck administration expect manufacturers and investors to believe that the flooding problem has been resolved. That cannot happen until the root cause has been determined and the data analysed. What were the processes that failed and what changes need to be done to resolve these problems?

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kena
Post : 288
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Discussion 13 : 09/01/2012 at 07:21 AM13
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Thai Irrigation officials predicting future floods for Bkk area, is like bureaucrats in California predicting future earthquakes there - ....and they say flooding could be as bad as 2011. I say 'wrong.' Future Bkk area floods will be worse than 2011. Time to take the bazillions earmarked for trying to keep Bkk dry - to instead invest in moving Bkk to satellite cities located at higher ground.
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mrscersei
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Discussion 12 : 08/01/2012 at 04:02 PM12
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D10, Oh yes the 'winds of change' will come sooner or later but I can only wonder if our actions for the last 5 years proves that Thailand is not ready for a democracy...filled with street protests of both yellows and reds, greater nepotism from politicians and a fracture of ideologies (meanings both sides cannot agree or see to reason) Let's face it, Thailand is a dysfunctional democracy on the brink of collapse(too extreme?)
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dao
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Discussion 11 : 08/01/2012 at 03:58 PM11
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Corruption feeds on indifference and ignorance .I believe our voting majoity would a little more concerned about what taxpayers money is wasted on if they paid income tax .
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Renaissance
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Discussion 10 : 08/01/2012 at 03:02 PM10
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Discussion 9: You seem to have given up hope for a better future, and given in to belief that corrupt politicians and (aspiring) dictators will prevail. They won’t. Eventually, people will tire of the suffering and hardships caused by such people, and demand change. Indeed, it’s already happening globally. The Thaksins of Asia are like fireworks. They come with promises of beauty and excitement, but after a short display they fizzle out and disappear into the darkness from where they came. Their world is one of darkness, but ours is not. Democracy will surely evolve into a form of global government in which spiritual qualities gradually become predominant. What you see now will fade away, and disappear like dust blown by the winds of change.
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mrscersei
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Discussion 9 : 08/01/2012 at 01:11 PM9
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Lung Kip, your naivety as being a European man could never understand the Asian mindset and our history. We like leaders who can make decisive decisions, that was why Suharto and Sarit, Thanom, Mahathir pushed many reforms through, some bad some good and was then popular (Check out an Indonesian poll that Suharto's New Order is preferred to the post-Suharto age). There is no such thing as democracy and rule of laws for the politicians of Asia, noone cares about them. So if you want a real'democracy'in Asia you can go live in the Philippines and you will be disappointed by how corrupted they are. Calling out for an honest government in a third-world country is naive at best, where even the opposition is as equally as corrupt.
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bangmodken
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Discussion 8 : 08/01/2012 at 11:17 AM8
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Lung Kip once again hits the nail on the head and as always,I fully agree with khun Renaissance D1.
Keep up the good informative work you're doing to help Thailand avoid a free fall into the abyss.
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egon
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Discussion 7 : 08/01/2012 at 10:29 AM7
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Listening to a speech by the environment minister I was flabbergasted by all the promises made:virtually every group will receive hand-outs of millions of baht without any improvement to infra stucture or productivity.The farmers will receive credit-cards and we all know what happened to the 1.000.000 million baht scheme for the villages {resulting in doubling household debt}.These policies will become disastrous for Thailand and I certainly believe the thai baht will devalue.Good timme to invest in dollars?!Nevertheless the people are happy till economics will bring them back to a destitute level.
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steveyinasia
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Discussion 6 : 08/01/2012 at 09:12 AM6
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In my experience it does not matter who owns the store, the fundamental piece missing in stores is the disinterest from staff to respond to customers. I see 6-8 Robinson's staff standing around chatting in a corner and not one approaches a customer to see if they need assistance. It's even worse if you happen to be a foreigner.
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Eggmeng
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Discussion 5 : 08/01/2012 at 08:56 AM5
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@Jack Gilead; Tesco Lotus is not an "English company", it's a majority Thai-owned joint venture.

Lucky you, while living on Koh Samui for the first 6 years of their operations there, despite dropping numerous suggestions at their customer service desk I never received a response to any of them, nor did I succeed in speaking with a manager. I found their customer service to be non existent at the management level.
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soltair
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Discussion 4 : 08/01/2012 at 08:31 AM4
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Lung Kip hit the nail on the head with "He deftly inserted a wedge into Thai society while he was in office and then with mighty hammer blows broadcast from abroad drove that wedge into the very heart of his own people." To me, Thailand has been irreparable damaged, one half is now suspicious of the other half.
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Drowning in flood misinformation | Bangkok Post: opinion