HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Disgrace at Jomtien Beach

Beach Road once again

A timely reminder

Concerning Mabprachan

Death by complacency

Disgrace at Jomtien Beach

Editor:
Attached is a photo taken this past week of the garbage and litter fouling the footpath alongside the Dongtan Beach parking lot. I think it is a disgrace to our beautiful city that hundreds of tourists are now forced to walk past this scene everyday. This is the main entrance to Dongtan Beach, not 100 meters from the police box.

It is bad enough that the city has allowed the construction of these shantytown dwellings right in plain sight of our beautiful beach, but to allow the garbage to collect unabated here as well is beyond belief!

Surely the city administration must not be aware of this disgrace or they would move quickly to correct this blight on our beach. It would be very bad indeed for tourists to start carrying the message to their home countries that Pattaya no longer cares for its beaches and is now allowing them to become garbage dumps.
Richard Silverberg

Beach Road once again

Dear Editor;
Driving back from dinner last night down Beach Road about 10 p.m. took me 35 minutes to make it from the Dolphin roundabout to South Pattaya / Walking Street. It is not high season and I was confused till I hit that corner.

It doesn’t need an Einstein like brain to figure out the main problem. Apart from the dozens of empty baht busses helping to make the traffic congestion all the way down Beach Road, the road was narrowed on that particular corner, pedestrian gates carelessly left together with road works which restricted the traffic flow to one lane, on top of that, the pedestrians stop the traffic every ten seconds. I mean the world belongs to them doesn’t it? Motorcyclists and car drivers and baht busses would disagree, but motorcyclists would, and invariably do win in any contest with anyone!

Why oh why can’t the police or city hall put someone on duty to hold up the pedestrians for a few minutes or so until there are a fair number of them, then stop the traffic, allow them to cross safely, repeat as necessary? Does that seem a too logical or revolutionary idea for anyone in authority to contemplate?

I mean Beach Road is already one of the longest running sad soap operas in Pattaya’s history, so sad it has become almost funny for us residents. I doubt if the visitors find it so!
RW

A timely reminder

Editor;
Your story “Mabprachan reservoir down to 2 months’ supply of water” by reporter Narisa Nitikarn is a timely reminder of the consequences of years of neglect and lethargy.

If Pattaya’s council members had a little more interest in the public need and good, rather than their own need and good, this problem of lack of water would have been solved many years ago.
Ian
Perth Australia

Concerning Mabprachan

Editor;
Why does the mayor ask for help when he continues to use sprinklers and water trucks to irrigate the Sukhumvit? Does he have any idea how much water he’s using? What about car washes? In time of drought these should be banned automatically.
Paul Adamson

Death by complacency

Dear Editor;
Hardly a day goes by that we do not learn of some new and disastrous way that we may meet our end, either by the forces of nature or at the hands of fanatical madmen. If you are travelling on the underground in Tokyo you may suddenly be snuffed out by inhaling deadly Sarin gas. If you are travelling on a train in Spain you may suddenly be blown up by a bomb, and if you are working in a high rise block in New York your life may suddenly come to an end when the building is hit by a Jumbo Jet.

Pattaya of course is not without its own novel forms of demise. We have all read of the 4 or 5 people who have been found dead with their hands and feet bound and plastic bags over their heads secured with rope. These the police assure us have all been suicides so nothing to worry about there then! And of course we must not forget the epidemic of farangs who seem to be falling to their deaths from the balconies of their high rise condos. Mass hysteria I suppose!

However, I do think that the residents of Soi Buakao should be very aware of the new form of potential death that exists in this area since Mr. Mayor Niran Wattanasartsathorn has been in office and that is death by complacency.

I refer of course to the presence of the large number of birds including chickens, geese, and illegal fighting cocks that are being kept in squalid conditions in the Thai village in Soi Buakao adjacent to Sai Sarm. I am one of the people referred to in a previous letter from Kittichai whose condo is only 2 or 3 metres from these birds’ faeces strewn enclosures. If the bird flu returns to Thailand I think it highly likely that it will sweep through this residential estate very quickly claiming hundreds of lives.

Most of the foreign owners in this estate have spent several million baht buying their condos and collectively inject hundreds of millions more into the economy of Pattaya every year.

So please Mr. Mayor put aside complacency and indifference, you have a responsibility and a duty of care to these residents, so, get these birds removed now and let the residents of Soi Buakao live without the threat of disease and death. Do not let Soi Buakao become your Ground Zero!
Concerned Pattaya

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