Governor calls consuls to ’keep the peace’ meeting

The meeting, held at Phuket Provincial Hall, saw representatives from 14 countries attend, including consuls for South Korea, Germany, France, Estonia, United Kingdom, Czechia, Chile, China, Australia, Russia, Mexico, Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Norway, Nepal and Spain.

Governor Narong said that Phuket has a large number of tourists, and tourists following the rules, namely laws, was important “for coexistence between local people and tourists to be happy and peaceful”, said an official report of the meeting.

Pol Maj Gen Sermphan Sirikong, Commander of the Phuket Provincial Police, said that ensuring the safety of tourists was successful due to the implementation of the White Accommodation Project (also called the ‘Phuket Crime - Free’ campaign), the report added.

The ‘success’ was in no small part the result of police working with ‘many sectors’,  including Phuket Immigration and hotels, in robbery and theft cases, especially involving Russian perpetrators and Russian victims, he said.

Phuket Immigration Chief Col Thanet Sukchai pointed out that according to official records there are currently 33,068 foreigners living in Phuket, with the top 5 being Russian, British, French and Chinese citizens, respectively.

Since the start of the year, 181 foreigners had been deemed suspects in criminal cases, with the top 5 being foreign nationals from Myanmar, Russia, France, England and Cambodia, respectively.

The consuls were also briefed on the official statistics on the number of tourists now coming to the island.

Among the slides shown, one presented that Chinese tourists climbed to the No 2 ranking for February, with 30,493 Chinese nationals arriving in Phuket. The slide pointed out that the number of Chinese arrivals amounted to "only 16.02% recovery rate" comapred with 2019.

The meeting was also used as a platform to remind the consuls of Phuket’s bid to host Expo 2028 and remind them of the Traffy Fondue ‘citizen empowerment’ app for reporting local issues to authorities.

The consuls were also reminded to call on nationals from the countries they represent to join the Rh-negative blood donation drive to be held at Central Festival on Monday (Mar 27).