Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Milestones achieved

Right on time with the Christmas holidays and the New Year around the corner, I finally finished three major milestones in my data collection - the work which kept me busy the last months and ate away the time I normally used to write postings here. Each of the milestones would be worth a blog posting on its own, but as the final posting of this year I give a short overview of what was completed recently. A big thank you to my co-worker, without his contributions I would be still another two months short of completing these tasks.
  • For each of the local administrative units, the subdistricts which are covered by them completely or partially are now listed in the XML files. The penultimate statistics I published a month ago, when there were still about 1200 of 7700 entities still missing.
  • Now all the administrative villages are in the province XMLs as well. The latest official number of Muban I have is 74956 for 2012, but in the XMLs I have 75202 Muban - the excess 200 are probably Muban which were declared obsolete because of being in town or city municipalities.
  • Last but not least, all of the Royal Gazette announcements defining the boundaries of the subdistricts are now processed and translated in one XML file. This was an important tool to complete the Muban list, both to notice mistakes due to missing Muban in my previous lists, as well as confirming odd Muban names or finding names not found elsewhere. Though not all Tambon had been listed in these announcements, and there were several odd mistakes in the announcements as well, these were and will be a good reference now they are much easier accessible.
One long-running task is almost done as well, collecting the dates of the local elections. Especially since the military junta stopped all local elections, I "only" have to catch up - though in fact most of those missing in my data are those which are not published on any provincial Election Commission website, so it needs much more time for searching than the actual data editing.

But there are still more than enough further tasks I plan to do with the XMLs. Adding the locations of the administrative buildings, this will then help to add geographical data to the Wikipedia/Wikidata entries. And I just recently started to encode the neighboring entities into the XML files as well, something I should write in more details into a separate posting.

I wish all my readers happy holidays and good new year, no longer neglecting this blog like I did the last months is one of my New Years resolutions.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Subdistrict to be reassigned in Uttaradit

In the cabinet meeting last Tuesday, one of the issues discussed was the reassign of the subdistrict Tha Faek (ตำบลท่าแฝก) from Tha Pla district to Nam Pat in Uttaradit province. To quote from the transcript of the cabinet meeting. Hopefully my translation is not totally wrong.
คณะรัฐมนตรีมีมติเห็นชอบร่างพระราชกฤษฎีกาเปลี่ยนเขตอำเภอท่าปลากับอำเภอน้ำปาด จังหวัดอุตรดิตถ์ พ.ศ. …. ที่สำนักงานคณะกรรมการกฤษฎีกาตรวจพิจารณาแล้ว ตามที่กระทรวงมหาดไทย (มท.) เสนอ แล้วให้ดำเนินการต่อไปได้

มท. เสนอว่า เนื่องจากตำบลท่าแฝก รวม 9 หมู่บ้าน ประชากรรวม 4,441 คน 1,355 หลังคาเรือน อยู่ห่างอำเภอท่าปลา 116 กิโลเมตร ทำให้ประชาชนได้รับความเดือนร้อนไม่สะดวกในการเดินทางไปติดต่อราชการและขอรับบริการงานต่าง ๆ แต่หากเปลี่ยนแปลงเขตการปกครองท้องที่โดยนำตำบลท่าแฝกไปขึ้นกับอำเภอน้ำปาด ซึ่งมีระยะทางห่างเพียง 59 กิโลเมตร อันเป็นการแก้ไขปัญหาความเดือดร้อนดังกล่าวให้แก่ประชาชน จะทำให้ประชาชนได้รับความสะดวกในทุก ๆ ด้าน ทั้งนี้ การโอนตำบลท่าแฝก อำเภอท่าปลา ไปขึ้นกับอำเภอน้ำปาด จังหวัดอุตรดิตถ์ ได้ผ่านความเห็นชอบจากราษฎรในตำบล สภาองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล ที่ประชุมหัวหน้าส่วนราชการประจำอำเภอทั้งสองอำเภอ สภาองค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด และที่ประชุมหัวหน้าส่วนประจำจังหวัดแล้ว
The cabinet has approved the draft decree to change the area of Tha Pla and Nam Pat district, Uttaradit. The Office of Juridical Council has already reviewed the proposal. The Ministry of Interior (MOI) then continued to propose this draft decree.

MOI states that Tha Faek subdistrict covers 9 administrative villages and 4441 citizen in 1355 household. It is located 116 kilometer from Tha Pla district [office] which causes the citizen inconvenience. Nam Pat district [office] is only 59 kilometer away, which will make it more convenient for the people in every aspect. The transfer of Tha Faek from Tha Pla to Nam Pat was already approved by the citizen in the subdistrict, the council of the subdistrict administrative organization, a conference with the section chief of the government offices of both districts, the council of the provincial administrative organization and the heads of the provincial government.
I first read about this proposal in July last year, when it was first discussed in the Board to consider draft laws [Meeting Transcript]. To become effective, this draft decree must be published in the Royal Gazette first, I am not sure whether it needs the formal approval by parliament as well - but given that this parliament is filled with people selected by the same junta choosing the cabinet members I don't expect any larger delays and guess it will come into effect early next year.

Looking at the map, the reason for this change becomes obvious - since the creation of the Sirikit dam in 1974 the area of Tha Faek became even more disconnected from the center of Tha Pla district than it already was before, actually it is surprising it took 40 years to adjust the administration to the changed traffic situation.