Despite having coped with December's deadly tsunami, Thailand is unprepared for disasters and emergencies because of excessive bureaucratic wrangling, officials warned in media reports yesterday.
"Operations become confused because there are many agencies involved and none of them has the authority to give out instructions or orders," Nikorn Jamnong, a parliamentarian who advises the government's disaster prevention department, said in the Nation newspaper.
Nikorn said at a disaster planning meeting held in Bangkok on Wednesday that he believed the country needed a national disaster prevention center
Nikorn suggested that the committee be chaired by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and tasked with coordinating better responses to emergency situations.
disaster prevention
Overlapping bureaucracy complicated disaster responses, Nikorn said.
Toxic chemicals, for instance, were covered by public health department laws, but their transport was governed by the regulations of the transport ministry.
Assistant army chief Lertrat Rattanavanich, who also advises the national disaster prevention committee, was cited by the Bangkok Post as saying that Thailand has suffered from a lack of readiness in terms of its manpower, material, funding and technology.
Thailand also needed to train and hire teams of professional rescuers and emergency personnel rather than have to rely on thousands of volunteers with inadequate training, he said.
Red tape has restricted the amount of funds given to tsunami survivors, meaning only 800 houses and six or seven schools had been built after the disaster, he added.
massive damage
The Dec. 26 waves killed some 5,400 people in Thailand, almost half of them foreign holidaymakers, and caused massive damage. More than 2,800 others are still listed as missing.
Thailand has been praised for its handling of the aftermath of the disaster, which killed more than 180,000 people in several Indian Ocean countries, and was the first country in the region to install a tsunami warning system.
But some foreign governments have questioned why no warning was issued in Thailand on Dec. 26 despite the meteorology department's knowledge of the massive earthquake off Indonesia which triggered the waves.
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