Thread: Graft blamed for loss of half Phuket's forests

Graft blamed for loss of half Phuket's forests

PHUKET: Officials from Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) visited Phuket yesterday (July 5) to study cases of forest encroachment and evidence of corruption, as part of a nationwide tour to gather information to be used in the creation of improved policies and regulations to protect national forests.


The locked gate of a large piece of land in the Karon area under NACC investigation. The signs in the background refer to a ‘Community Centre for Agriculture Advice’ and a ‘State Enterprise Experimental American Cattle Farm’.

The tour began in June, with the NACC targeting as Chiang Mai, Tak, Nakorn Sri Thammarat, Prachinburi, Phuket and Krabi provinces, in all of which forest encroachment is considered particularly rife.

“Especially in Phuket, the price of land is so high that it encourages encroachment,” said Kajadphai Burutpat, President of the NACC’s Subcommittee for the Prevention of Corruption (SPC).

The SPC met with relevant Phuket authorities today to get ideas and feedback on land encroachment issues.

The Phuket Forestry Department told subcommittee members that there were originally 16 protected forest areas in Phuket, covering some 40 per cent of the island.

However, the protected areas have shrunk by half due to a combination of land encroachment and the transfer of land to agriculture land reform, through the issue of SorPorKor papers.

SorPorKor papers were intended to give poor people land they could farm. Legally, the papers confer a form of squatter’s rights. They do not confer ownership of the land, nor the right to lease it out. The land may be used only for agriculture and the rights may be passed only to the holder’s heirs.
However, the very high value of land in Phuket has meant that many holders of SorPorKor land have succumbed to the temptation to sell “their” land for millions of baht, with the buyers then bribing officials to issue freehold Chanote papers for the land.

“Wrong uses of land are often found in Phuket,” said a member of SPC, Maj Gen Kittisak Marom. “The land here has attracted business people and politicians to look for the ways to occupy [more].”

Aggravating the decline in protected forest area are outdated laws and regulations which, the NACC believes, open the gate for corruption.

A further complication is that different authorities use different maps as references of land surveys. The protected forest boundaries on these different maps often do not correlate.

“However, I think one of the main causes [of forest encroachment] is official [corruption],” said a member of the SPC, Pathom Wimonthorn. “If officials adhered to the laws, there would be no encroachment.”

The results of SPC meetings with provincial authorities will be used to create alternative policies and laws, and perhaps even reform of the entire protected forest system, which will then be proposed to the government for implementation.

The SPC tour of encroachment hotspots in Thailand will continue until the end of this month.

Graft blamed for loss of half Phuket's forests | The Phuket News