A burning issue

Driving south along the Mitraparp Road yesterday, just south of Talaat Khae 50 kilometres north of Korat, I was dismayed to see large stretches of the central median being burned by roadside maintenance teams, presumably because cutting the grass is too time-consuming, more labour intensive and therefore more expensive. Now these beautiful trees are a drooping mass of brown, with their blackened trunks standing in a filthy sea of ash. It is no longer an uplifting sight, but depressing.

The government talks about reducing the incidence of burning, but seems to confine its interest to the North and the hapless hilltribes, who usually get the blame for this. It would do well to look closer to home and suggest to the Isaan regional authorities (and probably others) that burning the central reservations of roads is not only destroying the ratchapreuk, the national flower of Thailand, but is contributing to the already bad air pollution.

Johnny Thoyts

Pranburi