Chana people fight on over gas pipeline
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Seventeen residents of Chana district in Songkhla seeking legal remedy for the impact on their community of the Trans Thailand-Malaysia Gas Pipeline attended an appeal hearing at the Supreme Administrative Court in Bangkok yesterday.
In their appeal against the Administrative Court’s 2008 dismissal of their lawsuit against Thai authorities, the Chana residents are seeking a review of the pipeline’s environmental impact assessment, which they say did not take into account the impact on their lifestyle and fishing activities. Their lawsuit was against the Marine Depart-ment, the EIA Expert Review Com-mittee and the Office of Environ-mental Policy and Planning.
Ustas Nasoree, a religious teacher in Chana, told the court that the pipeline had affected villagers’ fishing activities and intruded on “wakaf” land, holy land donated by Muslim people for common use.
Panupan Chairat, chief judge of the Administrative Court of First Instance, recommended that the Supreme Administrative Court rule for a review of the environmental assessment by the EIA Expert Review Committee and the Office of Environmental Policy and Planning. The assessment should cover social impacts and ways to minimise the pipeline’s affect on the community. Trans Thai-Malaysia (Thailand) should be notified to follow the court’s decisions and all should be done in 180 days after the court ruling, or else the project’s licence to build structures across the river would be revoked immediately, according to Panupan.
