Disaster zone label ‘will hurt tourism’

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In: South-East Asia

PUBLISHED: 19 Mar 2024 at 05: 12

Disaster zone label 'will hurt tourism'
An atmosphere force helicopter surveys hotspots in northeastern provinces where wildfires are common during the summer. The BT-67 plane is deployed to lose water to stop wildfire spread so that ground operations can begin to end the blazes once they have identified important hotspots. Royal Thai Air Force

Srettha Thavisin, the government’s leader, has acknowledged that the government decided not to design Chiang Mai as a disaster area despite the country’s tourism industry suffering from worsening air pollution out of concern that it would harm the region’s tourism sector.

Mr. Srettha, speaking to X to defend the government’s decision, said he has listened to suggestions made by various stakeholders and that declaring the province a disaster zone will draw in foreign visitors, especially those whose insurance plans wo n’t cover issues that arise while traveling in disaster-hit areas.

There are other ways to handle the state’s air pollutants, so the authorities decided to go with the alternative which may cause the least risk to people’s livelihoods, he said.

The government also made a note of the government’s decision to increase funding for the Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation ( DNP ) on Sunday to assist with the wildfire fight.

He claimed that the government has not previously approved for a budget, and that the amount approved was more than the funds designated for disaster mitigation.

Despite the province’s worsening air pollutants, the government has been under fire for declaring Chiang Mai a crisis zone. In reality, the state’s air quality ranked among the country’s worst on Sunday.

But, tour operators agree with the goverment’s selection, with some opposing any program to consider the state a disaster area, despite the toll on local residents ‘ health.

More than 52, 000 travelers flow into Chiang Mai between March 1 and March 16, according to Panlop Sae Jiew, president of the Tourism Council of Chiang Mai, on Facebook, contributing more than one billion baht to the market.

” If the state were to be declared a disaster area, foreign customers would stop coming, hurting the business. However, the dirt pollutants continues to be unresolved”, he said.

42 regions reported dangerous levels of PM2.5 pollutants, with all 19 North American provinces reporting high fine dust concentrations.

Wildfires across Mae Hong Son caused an increase in heat pollutants. PM2.5 attention was at recorded at 294 microgrammes per square inch first Monday&nbsp, day, the highest in the northeast.