Three key ministries have been assigned to draft practical guidelines to tackle the problem of encroachment of state land by both the poor and the influential, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon said on Wednesday.
Gen Prawit, who heads a special committee on land encroachment, said after the first meeting of the panel yesterday that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry and the Interior Ministry will draft the guidelines and present them to the committee.
The guidelines will lay out steps on tackling encroachment by poor people and another set of steps to tackle land encroachment by rich and influential figures.
The panel made the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment the focal point for this effort and Minister Dapong Rattanasuwan said it should be carried out within a month.
The Prayut Chan-o-cha government is tackling encroachment of state land especially forest reserves and parks by raiding resorts that are built on illegally obtained land.
Gen Prawit said the prime minister ordered the committee to find practical measures to solve encroachment, as the old ways haven't proven very effective.
Gen Dapong said the ministries will have to look carefully at the practice of issuing land title deeds and Nor Sor 3 documents, especially when they are issued in forest zones.
"We will have to look at measures to prevent conspiracies between state officials and influential figures in issuing land documents in forest zones," Gen Dapong said.
Most owners of forest land usually claimed rights to the land by showing land title deeds issued by the Department of Lands at the Interior Ministry, but the process by which these deeds are issued is deemed illegal.
Some cases have ended up with the withdrawal of title deeds.
