People query logic behind power pole going through roadside drainage in Si Sa Ket
The photograph of a roadside sewer with a power pole going through its middle has gone viral, inviting satirical comments from many social media users and prompting local authorities to investigate.
On Tuesday, the Watchdog.Act Facebook page posted photographs of a concrete pole skewering through a drainage pipe alongside Highway 226 in Si Sa Ket’s Uthumphon Phisai district.
By Wednesday afternoon, the post had received more than 28,000 likes, generated over 3,200 comments and was shared over 2,400 times.
Most comments attacked the contractor hired to build the roadside sewerage for not finding a solution to circumvent the already existing power pole.
After the post went viral, Uthumphon Phisai’s assistant district chief Jirasak Sri-aram went to inspect the site on Wednesday.
But when he arrived at the scene, the contractor had already covered the top of the sewer with soil to make the power pole appear as if it was sitting on the soil.
However, Jirasak said when he lowered his mobile phone down a nearby manhole to take photos, he found that the pole was actually going through the middle of the sewage pipe.
Jirasak said the Provincial Electricity Authority’s Si Sa Ket office had informed him that the office would dispatch workers to relocate the pole as soon as possible.
The district office also checked with the Highway Department’s branch in Si Sa Ket, which owns the project, to find out why the power pole went through the middle of the sewage pipe.
According to Jirasak, the highway office quoted the contractor as saying that the road did not have enough space for the contractor to circumvent the pole when it laid the drainage. It added that the contractor had to lay the drainage pipe first, and if it turns out that it cannot drain the rainwater effectively enough, then it will look for another solution.
