Dear Editor,
Remember my story? On the last monthly service bill of my apartment, I had a 1000b penalty for having a poodle, after a vote prohibiting dogs by the condominium committee.
My girlfriend, in fact the poodle belongs to her, finally decided to contact the Jomtien police station after the management threatened to cut our water supply. She filed a complaint at the public prosecutor’s office in Na Jomtien. My girlfriend and an executive of the condominium were summoned 2 weeks later to a meeting with prosecutors, who would decide after hearing both parties.
The result: The dog shall not be seen in common properties, so we have to put him inside a bag to cross the compound. What happens inside the apartment, as long as the dog does not make noise, is strictly the business of the apartment owner, even if condo regulations exist about pets. No fine anymore. The presence of a dog in a condo is not a sufficient reason to cut the water (another dog owner had the police within 15mns in the manager office to explain that to the condo staff). The procedure was free of charge.
Because law courts are out of reach for the budget of most of the population, inexpensive channels seem to have been designed in Thailand to solve most of the simple problems that people encounter in everyday’s life. It saves a lot of time and money for everybody.
Expatriates in Pattaya tend to compare Thailand and their lands of origin, and most of the time are critical of the Thai side. Well, decent institutions staffed with decent people do exist here. If something here does not seem to function right, it’s maybe because we do not look at the right place. In France and probably all the western countries, you would have to sue your condo through a law court, where any legal action takes years and hundreds if not thousands of euros to get processed. I clearly prefer the Thai way to deal with this kind of problem.
Francois
