It is reported that the policy steering committee of the National Council for Peace and Order has sent a proposal on fisheries for the approval of the Cabinet (which contains a number of NCPO members). The idea is to pay 228.4 million baht in compensation to 4,800 fishing boats that have been operating without a licence or with illegal fishing gear.
These boats, whose past shenanigans are why the European Union is threatening to close its market to all Thai seafood exports, have not been able to fish, illegally or otherwise, since a government clampdown a few weeks ago. So the government thinks the owners deserve compensation for halting their criminality and obeying the law.
Another 2,658 boats may also be compensated at an estimated further cost to the taxpayer of 291 million baht. It is hoped that the boat-owners, whose adherence to law and morality is demonstrated by their past behaviour, will use this money to get proper licences and buy legal gear. It has not been mentioned in newspaper reports whether their illegal gear has been confiscated.
The money will be disbursed, we are told, by naval officers in the Command Centre for Combating Illegal Fishing. So that’s alright then.
Artisanal fishers, meanwhile, whose catches have been devastated by the illegal trawlers, will get nothing.
More schemes along these lines can be expected.
Taxis with meters that have been doctored to give inflated fares are also requesting compensation. It will cost them dear to put in kosher meters, they argue, to say nothing of the foregone illegal surcharges they have been collecting from cheated customers. Estimates are that each cab will lose something in the region of 20,000 baht a month in illegal earnings which the government will have to make good.
The taxi owners involved will be given new meters to install, but will not be required to junk the fraudulent meters. So it is feared that unless the government coughs up, they’ll just start using the turbo meters again. Or even if it does.
Meanwhile, taxi-drivers who have never dreamed of fiddling their meters will get nothing.
A number of hotels, resorts and private houses found to have encroached on National Parks and other reserved forests around the country have also applied for a government hand-out. ‘We are not seeking compensation for the demolition of our property,’ said one wealthy owner.
‘We have every expectation that we can come to an agreement with the government to allow our property to remain as it is. It’s just that we may now be expected to pay taxes and this would create real financial hardship for us.’
Government officials are currently surveying the situation and trying to arrive at an estimate of the compensation that will be required to allow law-breakers to continue doing business inside the forests.
Meanwhile, villagers who claim to have been farming land long before it was gazetted as part of a National Park will get nothing. Other than eviction orders and military harassment, that is.
The new police chief Pol Gen Chakthip Chaichinda has recently ordered an end to mobile check points, where the police chose different spots each day for observing traffic and dishing out tickets to those who violate the traffic laws, provided they do it on two wheels rather than four.
This has created the impression that the check points were somehow illegal. So those road-users who had been caught now feel that they had not, in fact, done anything wrong. So they want their money back, plus compensation for the damage to their good name for being caught breaking the law.
The Royal Thai Police, while sympathetic to this argument, is having difficulty identifying who should be compensated since for some reason, most of the tickets handed out never found their way into system. Currently about 1.9 million motorists claim that they were victims, a figure which is almost certainly inflated by bogus claims.
It seems likely, however, that the Cabinet will authorize compensation as a way of bringing happiness to the people. Those who did not break law, or who do not pretend that they broke the law, will of course get nothing.
When questioned by reporters whether these government payments were not rewarding criminals and sending the wrong signal to society, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon strongly disagreed.
‘I want to be very clear about this. We must uphold the law and the current government has been very strict about this, ever since the day we staged a coup that was illegal under the constitution of the time.’
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).
