Pollution fears stop Thailand's industrial heart

Claire Truscott Yahoo News 12 Mar 10;

MAP TA PHUT, Thailand (AFP) – In Thailand's industrial heartland, the workmen who should be constructing dozens of metal and petrochemical products are nowhere to be seen, their tools lying unused.

Legal action brought by environmental activists has brought dozens of projects to a halt until pollution fears have been addressed, seizing up nine billion dollars of investment and damaging the country's image.

The suspended projects at Map Ta Phut are part of a huge industrial estate on Thailand's eastern seaboard, a vast web of petrochemical, metal and energy plants the size of a city that dwarfs the rural villages surrounding it.

In those villages, the allegations against the plants are grave -- record cancer rates and respiratory disease in the area are blamed on the toxic fumes pumped out from the estate.

"We are not telling the factories to go away but we want them to control the fumes," says fruit farmer Noi Jaitang, 71, who suffers from breathing problems that he blames on fumes wafting across the fields to his house.

He says his wife has had cancer of the face twice and that his children are sick from acid rain in the area.

"When I sleep the fumes go in my eyes, and sometimes I have to stand and stretch just to breathe," he said.

But Noi says many others with similar problems are too frightened to complain, because unlike him they are employed by the factories.

A Thai court in September halted work at 76 projects in Map Ta Phut. Courts have subsequently allowed 20 of them to finish construction.

But the delays are causing anxiety among investors, already rattled by years of political unrest including a coup, the brief closure of Bangkok's airports by protesters in 2008 and fresh rallies set for this weekend.

The president of Japan's External Trade Organization for South and Southeast Asia has said the project suspensions are a bigger turn off than the protests, while Thailand's finance minister is currently in Tokyo to reassure investors.

Separately the Bank of Thailand has warned the row could cut the country's economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year and that it presents "major risk factors to the stability of the corporate sector".

"Investors are concerned, we are all concerned. This is the problem of complying with the new rules," said Chainoi Puankosoom, president and chief executive of PTTAR, part of the Thai industrial conglomerate PTT Plc.

PTT accounts for nearly a third of the projects on hold in Map Ta Phut and has warned its net profit could fall five percent this year and more in 2011 if it cannot resume work.

"When the projects are delayed we have to renegotiate with our construction workers, renegotiate with our lenders, which all costs us money and delays our operations," Chainoi said.

The court that initially halted the projects based its decision on tougher rules brought in under a 2007 military-backed constitution, following the coup that toppled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The rules force all firms in Thailand to carry out health assessments and hold public consultations before beginning new works to prove they will cause no environmental damage.

But the companies complain the new regulations are unclear and costly.

This angers lawyer Srisuwan Janya, a former student activist and campaigner for better pollution controls who helped win the initial injunction that stopped work at Map Ta Phut.

"The government is not sincere in following the constitution," said Srisuwan. "I'm not denying development but development should be based on standards not just 'come and take'."

Heavy pollution from the estate was first noticed in the 1980s, but it wasn't until 1997 that villagers began to form a green movement after children attending a neighbouring school were taken ill.

The school was moved out of the area and further scientific research was carried out. The National Cancer Institute in 2003 found that the highest rates of cancer in Thailand were in Rayong province, where Map Ta Phut is located.

Lawyer Srisuwan insists he will back the villagers all the way, whatever the economic consequences may be.

He says he has retaliated for the government's successful appeals against some of the suspensions by lodging a further nine complaints with Thailand's administrative court, and says he is working on more than 170 other new cases.

"Don't talk with me about the economy. I'm ready to fight every organisation so that these people can receive justice," he said.