Thursday, March 26, 2020

Bueng Kan town to be created

When the new province of Bueng Kan was created in 2011, there was one thing which was strikingly different to the previous batch of province creation - the capital of the province wasn't made a town (Thesaban Mueang). When the TIS1099 geocodes were assigned to the districts as well as the municipalities, the usual 99 for the provincial capital was left out, Bueng Kan subdistrict municipality was assigned the code 3898 instead.

At that time the actual location of the provincial administrative offices wasn't decided yet, but by now its construction is long completed in the southern part of Bueng Kan subdistrict, in area administrated by the Bueng Kan subdistrict administrative organization. Apparently now the time has come to create the first town in Bueng Kan province.

In the 5th meeting of the 1st board to consider draft laws on February 19 2020, a municipal change in Bueng Kan was discussed [transcript]  . But since I cannot access that website for 5 years already, only thanks to the Google cache I can read the meeting agenda, which includes "รวมองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบึงกาฬ เทศบาลตำบลวิศิษฐ์ และเทศบาลตำบลบึงกาฬ อำเภอบึงกาฬ จังหวัดบึงกาฬ และเปลี่ยนแปลงเขตและฐานะเป็นเทศบาลเมืองบึงกาฬ" which means that three local governments are to be merged into the new Bueng Kan town.

Bueng Kan subdistrict municipality covers parts of both Wisit and Bueng Kan subdistrict, and the other two local governments the remaining areas, thus the new Bueng Kan town will fully cover two subdistricts. It was only in 1988 that Bueng Kan subdistrict was split into these two subdistricts [Gazette], until then the main settlement was right in the center of the subdistrict.


Though I just learned about this pending change few weeks before it will become effective by publication in the Royal Gazette, it was in the making for much longer time already. In June 2019, the people in the three affected local governments could vote on whether they approve it.

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