Thailand Consumers Council demands city plan be revised

The Thailand Consumers Council (TCC) and Bangkok community representatives hand a letter to Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt on Friday at the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, opposing the new city planning blueprint. (Photo: Supoj Wancharoen)
At the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration on Friday, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt receives a letter opposing the new capital planning plan from the Thailand Consumers Council (TCC ) and Bangkok community members. ( Photo: Supoj Wancharoen )

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration ( BMA ) has requested that a public hearing on its new city planning blueprint be held by the Thailand Consumers Council (TCC ) and Bangkok community representatives, or they will ask the Administrative Court to rule against it.

At City Hall on Friday, TCC secretary-general Saree Aungsomwang and more than 100 people from 28 different neighborhoods in Bangkok wrote to government Chadchart Sittipunt to object to the new city plan.

Ms. Saree claimed that the town planning plan and public hearings on it were in violation of the City Planning Act.

The law mandates that any public hearings on metropolis planning must consider the potential negative effects on occupants and that people be given enough information about how to mitigate these negative effects.

They even violate Section 72 of the law, which stipulates any village arranging should meet the needs of people in the area, she said.

She claimed that the organized framework ignores issues involving traffic, flooding, and PM2.5 pollution while focusing on densely populated urban areas.

It likewise lacks measures to improve patient’s quality of life, especially low-income workers, Ms Saree said.

She claimed that a past framework created in 2019 has been used for public trials on the updated version. Since 2017, these trials have been held, but they lack the required level of public cooperation.

She said that only about 20 000 people have participated in these over the past seven times, adding that there was little time for them to express their opinions or ask questions.

According to her, a lack of specific details regarding the plan to expand many streets in Bangkok under the new framework is expected to have an impact on people.

The BMA has end its continuing public experiencing process and launch a new, more thorough one. The TCC and its networks will take the matter to the Administrative Court, according to Ms. Saree, if the BMA does n’t stop the hearings within 30 days.

Public hearings on the town planning framework were now taking place in 42 districts in Bangkok, according to Thaiwut Khankaew, chairman of the BMA’s City Planning and Urban Development Department. Hearings in the remaining eight districts must be finished by next month.

Feedback will be used to prepare the new capital planning template by November, he said, and it will be reviewed for consideration by the city planning committee.