Govt taps emergency fund to allocate THB272.65m for fighting forest fires

Kenikar Oonjit, deputy government spokesperson, was responding to comments from some opposition MPs that the government had not allocated enough personnel to fight forest fires.

The opposition said there were only some 1,800 rangers in charge of over 9 million rai (1.44 hectares) of protected forests and national forest reserves in Chiang Mai, which was not enough to protect them from being burned by villagers.

Villagers reportedly burn forests annually because of their belief that they could start a new growth cycle of mushrooms and certain edible plants which they could later put up for sale and consumption.

Kenikar said in a normal situation, the number of rangers were enough to protect the forests but she conceded that there were not enough officials during the forest fire, or dry season.

She said the Cabinet had made the allocation from the central emergency fund for hiring villagers to help officials watch out for forest fires.

She said 109.946 million baht was allocated to the Forestry Department and 162.7 million baht to the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

The spokeswoman added that the government of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was serious about fighting PM2.5 fine pollutants and was striving for integrated operations from all ministries to minimise air pollution.

She said the government was not focused only on Chiang Mai but on all 17 northern provinces.

For example, in Chiang Rai, after officials had put out the forest fires, measures were taken to prevent more fires, she added.