Time is up for rental rooms, makeshift pubs, and hotel annexes obstructing the drainage canal in South Pattaya. After owners ignored orders to remove them, the city has once again moved in with bulldozers and backhoes to demolish the remaining few. This is sorely needed to help alleviate chronic flooding in that section of town.
More than 30 Pattaya workers demolished rental rooms, makeshift pubs, and hotel annexes spread over 3 rai in South Pattaya after they ignored orders to remove obstructions to a drainage canal.
Deputy Mayor Verawat Khakhay and Sompob Wandee, director of the Water Quality Management Division led teams with backhoes and sledgehammers to the Soho Square area off Walking Street March 18.
Time is up for rental rooms, makeshift pubs, and hotel annexes obstructing the drainage canal in South Pattaya. After owners ignored orders to remove them, the city has once again moved in with bulldozers and backhoes to demolish the remaining few. This is sorely needed to help alleviate chronic flooding in that section of town.
The operation came 45 days after the latest city order for property owners to voluntarily remove structures over and obstructing the South Pattaya canal, a vital waterway for storm runoff.
Verawat said many property owners have cooperated with the latest city effort to clear the canal zone, but some intransigent owners refused to remove their buildings, which also included unpermitted private homes.
City workers tear down rental rooms caught trespassing and blocking the South Pattaya canal.
The demolitions are the first progress made on the canal clearing since September, when former Banglamung District Chief Sakchai Taengho told Pattaya city officials to stop stalling and get on with completing the job he began last April.
The work completed in the past year has been the most-significant progress at clearing the obstructed waterway since Pattaya officials first promised to do so in 2009. Bulldozers hit the area in April, May and August last year, then all work seemed to stop.
Officials from the Technician Office measure the area to determine the boundary of the public canal. Anything inside the boundary must go.
On Sept. 11, Sakchai told the city to proceed against the last holdouts, but final orders were not issued to the squatters until late January. The city then waited 45 days before bringing in the backhoes.
The last remaining illegal structure is the large entertainment venue at the entrance of Bali Hai Pier. The city is now waiting for orders from Chonburi Province on how to proceed.
