Eight months after vowing to crack down on boat operators and businesses fueling a pollution crisis on Koh Sichang, Chonburi provincial leaders are still talking, rather than acting.
Deputy Gov. Phawat Lertmukhda said at a Chonburi City Hall meeting Jan. 23 that boat inspections will be launched and new regulations drafted to stop ferries and freighters from tossing garbage overboard and spilling oil into the sea.
The meeting came nearly eight months to the day after Phawat chaired an earlier meeting on the same topic with the same end result: promises of inspections and new rules that never materialized.
He said then that Koh Sichang was suffering from garbage-strewn beaches, oil slicks from sunken ocean vessels, and air pollution caused by the many boats bringing people and supplies from Sriracha.
As he did in May last year, the deputy governor said a system should be created and measures taken to control vessels transporting goods from the mainland so that they do not cause long-term adverse effects on the environment. Anyone violating the law would be prosecuted, he vowed, without specifying what any of those new measures would entail. (CPRD)
