On Sunday, I was on the overloaded orange flag Chao Phraya express boat.
Just as many times over the last 10 years when taking this otherwise scenic commute, a vessel fit for some 90 passengers was carrying at least 300 for most of the route. The weather was gorgeous and only the engine struggled at times.
But I have been on similarly overloaded vessels weekly for 10 years now, often in less favourable weather and with staff instructing all to compress inside. That's how most of the 200 passengers on the recently capsized and equally overloaded vessel on Lake Toba drowned.
I wrote a similar letter some five years ago I believe, and nothing has changed. So I figured it's time to do my part to keep up pressure on the authorities and the Chao Phraya Express Boat Company to care more about the lives and livelihoods of their employees and passengers.
A concerned family medicine doctor who believes in preventive medicine
Nature as scapegoat
A July 1 article in Spectrum about farmers having to migrate due to climate change is a false premise and allows for the true reason to be ignored because the elite would have to adjust their lifestyles.
The real reason farmers are having a hard time and their children are "leaving a lifestyle of traditional farmers to seek for better income in the cities" is strictly economic, not weather related.
The two most important roles in all societies are shunned and looked down on now. Farmers and teachers perform the most critical tasks for human existence and they are treated like untouchables by the elite.
Farmers feed the belly and without a full stomach from rice you will not have the energy to live, let alone work. Teachers feed the mind and without a brain full of ideas, problems do not get solved and technology does not advance.
So why are these two positions within an economy not compensated in relation to their importance? I don't need a cell phone, but I do need to eat.
We all need to ask this question, why do we not value these people and allow them just compensation for their activities? If the income for farming was in line with the relevance of the activity, few children would leave the farm.
If we paid farmers and fisherman wages that would bring them honour, maybe they would not be forced to fish illegally or spray hazardous chemicals killing themselves and the environment.
Until we adjust economically and pay these people accordingly and alter our priorities, the system will continue to collapse.
Darius Hober
What do Thais think?
Re: "Majority believe election, new govt will improve economy: poll", (BP, July 1).
Polls like those regularly reported from Nida and Suan Dusit are interesting because they might indeed represent what Thais think, which is often not what is in fact the case. Still, it's useful to know what the public thinks, albeit only on officially permitted topics.
The truly important issues to Thai society are strictly off limits to informed opinion, being protected by censorship that enforces ignorance not only of the topics themselves but of what Thai people truly think about those topics of national importance.
Felix Qui
Cave data dilemma
ML Saksiri Kridakorn writes in his June 30 letter, "throughout the entire history of Thailand we have never had high accuracy elevation modelling data", and laments the government's failure to allocate the funds necessary to acquire it.
A study by N Ruskin et al demonstrates that data available freely from Google Earth is comparable in accuracy to that obtained from the commercial satellite systems ASTER and SRTM. It's not the data set, but the mindset that's missing.
Michael Setter
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