“I believe these new teams will be set up very soon,” V/Gov Chokdee told The Phuket News yesterday (Feb 4).
“They will help a lot, as they will be specifically tasked with ensuring the beach management rules are followed,” he said.
The move to set up teams of ‘beach-rule enforcers’ comes as Wanchai Saetan, Chief Administrator of Kata-Karon Municipality, this week called for manpower support from the police or even the Royal Thai Navy in order to enforce the beach rules in his area.
Mr Wanchai said he had no idea about the beach chairs chained to trees at Kata, photos of which were sent to The Phuket News on Monday (Feb 1).
“But I have now ordered my officers to look into this,” he said.
“However, we must figure out who owns those chairs before we take any action. They might belong to tourists. If they are, we will point out to them the signs on the beach explaining the rules and hand them copies of the multi-language brochure which we hand out to tourists on the beach.
“I do not want to aggravate any tourists over this as it is such a sensitive issue,” he added.
But if the chairs do belong to vendors, action will be taken, Mr Wanchai warned.
“They must be warned, fined and reported for doing this in a public area. It is like privately reserving an area of the beach – and no one is allowed to do that,” he said.
Mr Wanchai recounted one report of beach vendors attempting to flagrantly ignore the beach rules.
“I received one report about someone trying to break the rules by bringing chairs to the beach by truck,” he said.
“Our officers saw them, but they took off before our officers could catch them. Honestly, we just need extra manpower to keep an eye out and enforce the beach rules,” he said.
On the Kata Beach incident, V/Gov Chokdeee stressed, “There should not be any chairs on the beach. It is the local municipality’s responsibility to make sure this rule is followed.
“Even then, the district office for each area is responsible for making sure the local administrations in the district enforce the beach rules. If this cannot be done, it is the district office’s duty to report it to the provincial office.”
V/Gov Chokdee said that the beach rules were being well adhered to at “about 80 per cent” of the key tourist beaches in Phuket.
“The other 20 per cent still have a few little issues to sort out,” he said.
“But local administrations have been claiming a ‘lack of manpower’ for a long time. If they cannot do their job – then the Provincial Office will arrange the manpower for them,” he added.