The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) intends to spend 19.5 billion baht on 100 new diesel locomotives, (BP, Aug 15).
Apparently the SRT management has consulted their 1950s era business strategy playbook. With outstanding debt of 100 million baht and losing 10 million more every year one might imagine they would embrace a more comprehensive and forward-looking strategy that takes into account the government's development plans, especially with respect to high-speed rail.
The SRT ranks among the least efficient of all state enterprises. It is high time their board of directors woke up to the fact.
Michael Setter
Looking for trouble
While the reasoning behind Somsak Pola's "People power" letter on Aug 18 may be reasonable, the logistics would be boggling. It is a good way for people to get revenge on those who annoy them, provide potential lawsuits for the next million years, and bankrupt a city's treasury. (This of course is tongue in cheek, but think of the potential payouts on a daily basis).
Lots of unsuspecting people with no intent to harm, cause injury or other problems would unwittingly become involved. Imagine if I took my motorbike out of the garage fronting the street and had to pass over a metre of sidewalk to get into the traffic lane. I'd be a scofflaw. While I have no answers or solution to the problems of catching scofflaws, guidelines need to be more specific.
Khun Somsak also assumes everyone runs around with smartphones. A study in Japan showed that 80% of those owning smartphones could not understand about 80% of its working features. I could imagine a person spotting a scofflaw, then spending the next hour trying to figure out how to report the incident. If Khun Somsak thinks he could make 1,000 baht a day, think of all the others who think the same. There goes the work force. Why work when one can be strolling the streets or leisurely sitting on a park bench as a lookout?
Miz Rachi
It's just poor form
Re: "Discarding TM6 no solution to airport queue woes", (BP, Aug 15).
I agree that abolishing the requirement for arriving passengers to complete the obnoxious TM6 arrival/departure document will not by itself solve the problem of lengthy delays at Thailand's airports. Elimination of this unnecessary form -- for both Thai nationals and foreign visitors -- will help, but the real solutions lie with adding more immigration counters and on-duty officers, improving the training of processing staff (perhaps even teaching them to smile and act cheerful?), and investing in modern automated screening devices.
It is mind-boggling that countries far less developed have immigration procedures that are so much more advanced than Thailand, considering the latter depends so heavily on tourism.
This is not a new problem and one has to wonder why the Immigration Bureau and Airports of Thailand have ignored this steadily advancing crisis for so long. The heads buried in the sand at these agencies should roll!
Samanea Saman
Immigration futility
Re: "Criminal treatment", (PostBag, Aug 16).
Over the years, so many letters have been published in this column complaining about silly, outdated, cumbersome and ineffectual immigration rules and imposed procedures on us, long-term "residents", though the term is not recognised by the authorities who just grant us a "one-year extension" at a time although I have lived in this country for a very long time (26 years).
Speaking fluent Thai helped many times smooth out potential hurdles where the on-duty officers started to request multiple or strange documents, depending more on their mood than on standardised regulations. But Lungstib's general impressions of being treated as a prisoner on parole agitate some very strong vibrations in my heart.
Sadly, the Bangkok Post is certainly not reading material for the officers in charge of developing and implementing immigration policies, so we are barking up the wrong tree. The only thing that will -- sorry, might -- have an impact is the pressure of social media when disturbing pictures are shared worldwide.
Everything else, inclusive of this type of kind reminder that the Thai Immigration is treating us like dangerous prisoners is, at best slightly comforting, at worst completely futile.
Michel Barre
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