FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Water project hinges on court decision

Water project hinges on court decision

A big hurdle awaits the government's Bt350-billion water-management scheme, as the Central Administrative Court will decide on June 27 as to whether it can go ahead with the flood-prevention modules.

The ruling will be made in response to a petition filed by Stop Global Warming Association’s chairman Srisuwan Janya and 44 other people.
On Monday, the government announced bidders with top technical scores for each module. The price negotiation is underway, with results to be announced this week. Contract signing will take place at later date.
The petition accuses Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the Strategic Committee for Water-Resources Management, the National Water-Management |and Flood-Prevention Policy Commission and the Water- and Flood-Management Commission (WFMC) of abusing their authority when preparing the projects related to the flood-prevention/water-management systems.
 
PROJECTS ‘RUSHED’
The petition points out that the accused parties suspiciously rushed to introduce the mega projects and the Cabinet issued a loan decree to finance the projects on January 26, 2012 –just five days after the master plan on water management was unveiled.
The court will hear testimony from both sides on June 25.
Early last month, the court decided not to issue an injunction to block the bidding process for the mega projects, saying that no legally binding effects would arise from the WFMC decision to receive the bids.
After the court’s announcement yesterday, WFMC chairman Plodprasop Suraswadi, who is also a deputy prime minister, said any module that did not get an approval for its environmental impact assessment (EIA) would be scrapped.
Monton Panupokin, managing director of Korea Water Resources Corp (K-Water) which is tipped to win the biggest pie in the scheme, said if the price was approved, the Bt130-billion monkey-cheek or water-retention-area project could proceed immediately.
“Other than for the water-diversion channel project, we |will conduct an EIA on other modules first,” he said.
 

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