The clean-up follows Phuket Vice Governor telling disgruntled ex-beach vendors to find other work if they refuse to accept that they will no longer be allowed to perform their old jobs at their original sites, on public space. (Story here)
“Our beach must be cleaned and free of garbage for a good image,” said MrSunan Boonwat, President of Kata Karton beach chair club, “Even if we are not allowed to have businesses here, but we still want to keep it clean, because this is our home. We do not want our home to look dirty.
“Some hotels operating here capitalize on the good landscape as their selling point, yet they don’t even contribute to the upkeep of a clean beach. We can’t stand on it anymore,” he added.
“Instead of protesting against those people, we decided to set a weekly date for beach cleaning in Kata and Karon, to be every Friday, and if sometimes the garbage is too much, we will collect it on Saturday also,” Mr Sunan said.
However, their prospects to use the beach for business remains bleak.
“Besides, while we are waiting for officials consideration [to solve our jobless problem], we are free. We are always being told to change our job, but I've worked here for 30 years. I am too old to start a new job,” he explained.
“In the past, we had never stopped working as we need money for our children and monthly bills. But now, we have nothing as we lost job for the past three months and we also have a lot of debt [bills] to pay.
“Hopefully, they [officials] will note our good intentions and some day allow us to keep our old jobs.” he concluded.