Five agencies agree to team up against land encroachment
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The Office of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) teamed up with four environmental watchdog agencies yesterday to review officials who may be involved in encroachment on forest land and illegally destroying natural resources.
“We found that a lot of officials, especially those who work at the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry and Land Department, are involved in forest encroachment by designating fake forest boundaries and issuing illegal land-ownership documents for forest reserve areas,” PACC chief Pol Colonel Dusadee Arayawut said.
The PACC also found that many high-level officials, politicians and celebrities had used their influence to force forest and land officials to issue land-ownership documents for forest reserve and national park areas for them, he said.
Dusadee spoke at the signing ceremony for a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on natural resources and environmental crime suppression and prevention held by the PACC yesterday.
Under this agreement, five state environmental watch agencies – the PACC, Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, Interior Ministry, Department of Special Investigation and Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) – will work to speed up inquiries into forest land encroachment.
All documents and evidence related to land encroachment will be shared among the five agencies. This is likely to help investigators a lot in finding and punishing wrongdoers.
Dusadee said he had met the prime minister’s secretary to give the names of politicians and high-level officials who may be involved in encroachment on forest land and recommended that the cases be investigated.
Chote Trachoo, permanent secretary of the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, said his agencies would seek help from the PACC to probe ministry officials who may be involved in forest encroachment in Phuket, Phang Nga, Khon Kaen and Trat province’s Koh Chang.
Forest reserve and national park areas in these provinces had seen extensive illegal encroachment by wealthy people to build resorts, he said.
To date, forest area nationwide totals only 107 million rai. About 500,000 rai of forest is occupied by encroachers every year, according to Chote’s ministry.
“Nowadays, forest encroachment is very complicated. Many people are involved in illegal encroachment such as wealthy people, mafia and officials,” Chote said.
ALRO secretary-general Weerachai Nakwiboonwong said his agencies were investigating officials who allow farmers to use reformed land for the wrong purpose, such as building resorts instead of agricultural purposes, as required by law.
The ALRO has examined reformed land nationwide by using satellite images and found that about 10,000 rai of 34 million rai of reformed land has been used for buildings and other construction.
The ALRO will also team up with the Land Department to examine reformed land plots that have illegally issued Sor Kor 1, a land-ownership document.
“Officials who neglect their duty must get disciplinary punishment,” Weerachai said.
Deputy permanent secretary of the Interior Ministry Surapol Pongtadsirikul said he would order all governors and district chiefs nationwide to follow the MoU when investigating land-encroachment cases.
DSI director-general Tarit Pengdith said that in the past, these five agencies had worked separately to investigate forest encroachment but from now they would have to team up and work together to catch wrongdoers.
“The DSI will fully support the operation under this MoU to find wrongdoers and punish them,” he said.
