Chumchon emblems

While looking for new local administrations to add to my Google plus circle, I stumbled upon the account of the borough (Chumchon) Tha Ruea (ชุมชนตลาดท่าเรือ) of Surat Thani city. Though still an inactive account, it is the first of the municipal subdivisions which I found in Google plus. But when I looked for some more information about the boroughs of Surat Thani - the city website sadly has no such list, so it a bit more searching was necessary - I next found the facebook page of this borough, which is much more active than their Google plus. The header artwork of their page then to my surprise did not show the emblem of the city, but an emblem specific to the borough.

So far, to my knowledge it is only those administrative units to have an emblem which are also a legal person - thus the provinces, the municipalities and TAO, the PAO (which however usually share the same artwork as the province) and Bangkok and its district. The other districts however have no emblem, since they are also no legal person. I have never before seen any borough emblem, and also don't know whether the borough have legal person status or not, but since this emblem looks very much like the other official emblems there may be even more emblems of administrative units than the nearly 8000 of the types listed above. Its a pity there seems to be no heraldic books on Thailand except those few published by the Department Of Fine Arts.

The emblem of Tha Ruea depicts a Chinese style ship, which fits the name and location of this borough - Tha Ruea means "harbor", and it is located directly at the river front harbor of the city. Though harbor is a bit of an exaggeration, there are only very few ships there - and to me it always seemed like they are permanently moored there, as I never seen any ship leave or noticed them change position.

Anyway, now I am of course curious if the other 42 boroughs of Surat Thani also have such emblems, or if the boroughs of other municipalities have such artwork as well. It is really sad that in most municipality websites, there boroughs are either not mentioned at all, or just as the list of their names, but no detailed information.

Chumchon office in Phitsanulok

The photo web site Panoramio, most known due to the fact that the photos from there are automatically displayed within Google Earth, had helped me to find the locations of administrative offices several times already, especially when the building is clearly identifiable from above and the view from the street with the sign help to get the correct coordinates.

Now more by random googleing than actual searching, I stumbled on a photo of the office of a municipal borough (Chumchon, ชุมชน), the administrative unit I know almost nothing about. So now I learned that the office of a borough is named ที่ทำการชุมชน. It turns out that this specific borough, borough number 14 of Phitsanulok city named Chumchon Suea Thim (ชุมชนเสือทิม) is quite present on the web, while the city does not even have a list of their boroughs on the website, this borough has its own website, an active Facebook page, and also some albums on Picasa.

So now this borough is the first one which got a complete entry in my XMLs.

<entity type="Chumchon" geocode="65990014" name="ชุมชนเสือทิม" english="Chumchon Suea Thim">
  <office type="ChumchonOffice">
    <vision>พัฒนาชุมชนให้เจริญและยั่งยืน เพิ่มศักยภาพของคนในชุมชน สร้างชุมชนให้เข้มแข็ง</vision>
    <geo:Point>
      <geo:lat>16.8138</geo:lat>
      <geo:long>100.2810</geo:long>
    </geo:Point>
    <url>http://chumchonsua-tim.com/</url>
    <officials>
      <official title="ChumchonChairman" name="สาวสุนิษา กำไร" inoffice="2011"/>
    </officials>
  </office> 

</entity>

Chumchon with a different name

Some time ago I systematically searched for websites for all of the local government units, and since then occasionally revisit some in order to check the URL is still valid, a new mayor gets listed, or some data I did not spot in the first round worth adding into my XML. One of these revisited websitesd was the one of Khun Yuam subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลขุนยวม) in Mae Hong Son province. The interesting part is on the page where the municipality gives information on its subdivision, the boroughs (ชุมชน, Chumchon). While they only list the names without any numbering - so I cannot guess the geocodes to add them into the XML - the sentence introducing them says

เทศบาลตำบลขุนยวมแบ่งการบริหารงานออกเป็น 8 ชุมชน หรือ 8 ป๊อก คำว่า "ป๊อก" หมายถึง ชุมชน โดยมีการบริหารงานกันเองในชุมชน Khun Yuam subdistrict municipality is divided administratively into 8 boroughs or "pok". The name "pok" means boroughs which have an personal administration in the borough.

Rather interesting is also the location of the administrative offices in that subdistrict. Whereas the municipality office is located in the middle of the municipality, a bit strage is the fact the the TAO Khun Yuam has its office just 300 meter away, well within the municipal area (see Panoramio for some photos of it). And, unlike many of the municipalities near the district office, in this case the district office is located outside the municipality - in many cases district office and municipality office are directly next to each other and form the center of the municipality. So I am doing a nice little map again to show the approximate borders of the municipality. Sadly the map in the 1956 announcement to create the sanitary district is more like a sketch map than correctly scaled, so I can only guess that the district office back then was located very close to where it now has the municipality office.

View Khun Yuam in a larger map

Number of Chumchon in large municipalities

Whereas most of the municipalities have just a handful of boroughs (Chumchon, ชุมชน), when I had a look at the website of Ubon Ratchathani recently I was surprised to find that there are quite a lot of boroughs in that city. On their map subpage, it has a map and list of 106 boroughs, and even detail maps for (almost) all of them. As the city has a population of about 85,000, this means each of the boroughs has about 800 citizen. Sadly I cannot find a table with the data for each borough, only other information piece is area which is written into each of the details map, e.g. for Chumchon 106 named Wat Burapha 2 (วัดบูรพา 2) the value is 1,436,513.09. The unit is missing, but as the whole city covers 29.04 km² it seems this is square metre and not square wa (ตารางวา).

While I already knew that Chiang Mai has a similar number of borough - 90 split between four subdistricts - the number exceeding 100 poses an interesting problem for the geocodes of the boroughs. Though they are hardly found, and I haven't yet found any complete list of these codes, it seems that they follow the system of the administrative villages (Muban) by using the last two digits of the 8 digit code. Thus the first borough Ban Kan Lueang School 2 (โรงเรียนบ้านก้านเหลือง 2) would have the code 34990001, and the last allowed code would be the 99 for Wat Si Pradu 1 (วัดศรีประดู่ 1). The final 7 borough however have no space in this system anymore.

It would only fit in case there is another level of subdivision in between - the two zeros could be used in case there are Khwaeng in Ubon Ratchathani same as in Chiang Mai, and though I have found nothing which would prove any like this the map on the Thai Wikipedia shows four areas with distinct colors. Even if these aren't official city subdivisions, using such would allow to fit in all the codes. Another possible escape would of course to use something inspired hexadecimal notation, after 99 continue with A0. The least preferred escape would be to use the last four digits for the boroughs and give borough 106 the code 34990106, as that would break the hierarchical structure of the codes.

Chumchon geocode confusion

I am now completely confused with the numerical codes for the Chumchon (ชุมชน, best translation might be "borough"), the subdivisions of the municipalities. Some time ago, I found that in Ang Thong the codes follow a simple rule, using the municipality code as the basis and then adding 00xx. Except that there's of course the problem with the lack of codes for all the municipalities, this makes perfect sense as the Chumchon are at a similar administrative level as the villages, which has a similar coding scheme.

However, now I took a look at the website of Warin Chamrap town, adjoining to the south of Ubon Ratchathani city. The page which shows the map of the town, including the full boundaries of all the Chumchon, also includes a list with the names and codes (รหัสชุมชน) of all 28 subdivisions. To my surprise, the codes there are from 34150101 to 34150128, which would be normally the code range for administrative villages (Muban) in Warin Chamrap subdistrict. Since this subdistrict is completely covered by the town municipality (it was upgraded to a town in 1995), it has no Muban anymore, so these codes are free. But nevertheless, I would have expected the codes to be 34980001 to 34980028 instead.

The pages on the Warin Chamrap website all have the possibility to add comments, so I tried my luck and posted this question there as well - though I have not much hope I will get any answer.

Chumchon administrative posts

On the website of the subdistrict municipality Phon Sa (เทศบาลตำบลโพนสา), Tha Bo district, Nong Khai province, I for the first time noticed not just a list of the boroughs (Chumchon, ชุมชน), but also both the leader of each one, and even more all the other boroughs officials. There are a total of six boroughs.

• Santi Tham (ชุมชนสันติธรรม) - List
• Pratit Patthana (ชุมชนประดิษฐ์พัฒนา) - List
• Siwilai (ชุมชนศรีวิไล) - List
• Thep Mongkhon (ชุมชนเทพมงคล) - List
• Sarawan (ชุมชนสาระวัน) - List
• Ban Khan Yai Phatthana (ชุมชนบ้านขามใหญ่พัฒนา) - List

Now, each of the borough has the following officials

• Chairman of Borough Council (ประธานคณะกรรมการชุมชน)
• Vice chairman of Borough Council (รองประธานกรรมการชุมชน)
• Secretary (เลขานุการ)
• Director of Administration (กรรมการฝ่ายปกครอง)
• Director of Safety and Peace-keeping (กรรมฝ่ายป้องกันและรักษาความสงบเรียบร้อย)
• Director of Treasury (กรรมการฝ่ายคลัง)
• Director of Public Health and Environment (กรรมการฝ่ายสาธารณสุขและสิ่งแวดล้อม)
• Director of Development (กรรมการฝ่ายพัฒนา)
• Director of Education and Culture (กรรมการฝ่ายการศึกษาและวัฒนธรรม)
• Director of Welfare and Social (กรรมการฝ่ายสวัสดิการและสังคม)
• Director of Industry (กรรมการฝ่ายอุตสาหกรรม)
• Director of Commerce (กรรมการฝ่ายพาณิชย์)

I could not find recommended translations for these positions, but I hope they are not totally wrong and give an idea of the responsibilities of the respective officials.

Chumchon geocodes

Municipalities are subdivided into communities (chumchon), a subdivision I know hardly anything about. But since it roughly corresponds to the villages (muban), I had anticipated that they should have numerical codes similar to the villages.

Now I just tried to google for the Thai word "รหัสชุมชน" (Chumchon code), and to my surprise I found quite a lot of hits. Among the first was a forum entry at the website of Ang Thong town municipality (เทศบาลเมืองอ่างทอง),

ชุมชนศาลเจ้าพ่อกวนอูเป็นชุมชนใหม่เกิดขึ้นตามประกาศเทศบาลเมืองอ่างทอง เรื่อง การกำหนดพื้นที่ชุมชน ณ วันที่ 19 พฤษภาคม 2552
มีจำนวนครัวเรือน 255 ครัวเรือน
ประชากร 513 คน
รหัสชุมชน 15990014
[...]

It says, that on May 19 2009 the new community "San Chao Pho Kwan U" was established, having 255 households and 513 citizen, and the geocode 15990014. Exactly the kind of code I was expecting, since Ang Thong municipality has the code 1599, and to get to the same hierarchical level as the villages two zeros are added between the chumchon number and the municipality code. The forum entry then continues with a short description of the boundary.

Now continuing with this code, as well as with the code for Chumchon 13, I then found two Excel sheets, both from the SML program, the fund to support the Muban and chumchon originally started by the populist Thaksin government.

The first named Angthong.xls dates from August 2008, and contains only the codes 1 to 13 for Ang Thong town. The second, named chumchon.xls is from August 2009 and lists 4421 chumchon from all over the country. For Ang Thong it has 22 chumchon, including the one mentioned above. Thus it seems Ang Thong created 9 new chumchon in 2009, however only one is mentioned in the forum. Sadly, this chumchon.xls is definitely not a complete list, those few municipalities where I added chumchon to the XML files before are all not covered there. I have no idea how many chumchon it has altogether, none of the annual statistics I know of lists them. Only the news report I linked above for the SML program says there are 3414 in 2008.

Chumchon and Muban Part 2

In an earlier example, I showed one subdistrict municipality where the boroughs (Chumchon, ชุมชน) and the administrative villages (Muban, หมู่บ้าน) coincide one-to-one. Now I have come across another different case, this time it has villages split into several chumchon, thus the local administration is giving the subdistrict more subdivisions than it has in the central administration.

The subdistrict municipality is Phum Riang (เทศบาลตำบลพุมเรียง), which covers the whole same-named subdistrict in the east of Chiaya district, Surat Thani province. The central town is most famous for its silk production.

According to the municipality website, the subdivisions are as follows.

Chumchon		Muban	Area
1.	บ้านนอกนา	1	from behind Wat Mai till Muban boundary
2.	บ้านกลาง	1	from front of Wat Mai till Soi Sawang Net
3.	บ้านล่าง	1	from east of Soi Sawang Net till Muban boundary
4.	บ้านหัวโอ	2	from east of Soi Osen Optam till Muban boundary
5.	บ้านบ่อเดื่อ	2	from road next to Wanna shop till old Wat Suan Mokh
6.	บ้านเหนือ	3	complete Muban
7.	บ้านเหนือน้ำ	4	complete Muban
8.	บ้านแหลมโพธิ์	5	from foot of Laem Pho bridge till Kubo boundary
9.	บ้านแหลมทราย	5	from Kubo boundary till Muban boundary

Sadly no map on the website to illustrate these divisions, and I have no other resources to create one myself.

Chumchon and Muban

While adding some websites of the subdistrict administration organizations (TAO) and municipalities to my XMLs, when I can find a list of the administrative villages (Muban) within the subdistrict I also add it. Insofar the website of the TAO Ban Khok (บ้านโคก), Khok Pho Chai, Khon Kaen province is nothing special, it includes a list of 8 Muban, and lists separately those completely under the TAO and those partially administrated by the TAO and partially by the subdistrict municipality Ban Khok.

Muban completely in TAO
หมู่ที่ 4	บ้านนายาว	Ban Nayao
หมู่ที่ 5	บ้านโสกใหญ่	Ban Sok Yai
หมู่ที่ 6	บ้านโนนคูณ	Ban Non Khun
หมู่ที่ 9	บ้านหนองทุ่ม	Ban Nong Thum
หมู่ที่ 10	บ้านหนองชมภู	Ban Nong Chomphu
Muban shared by TAO and Thesaban
หมู่ที่ 2	บ้านโสกนาดี	Ban Sok Na Di
หมู่ที่ 8	บ้านโคกสง่า	Ban Khok Sanga
หมู่ที่ 11	บ้านนาวิลัย	Ban Nawilai

As this list lacked those Muban completely within the municipality, I checked the website of the municipality as well. And this includes a list of all the communities (Chumchon) of the municipality.

หมู่ 1	บ้านโคก	Ban Khok	ชุมชน 1	บ้านโคกพัฒนา	Ban Khok Phatthana
หมู่ 2	บ้านโสกนาดี	Ban Sok Na Di	ชุมชน 2	โสกนาดี	Sok Na Di
หมู่ 3	บ้านโคก	Ban Khok	ชุมชน 3	รวมพลัง	Ruam Phlang
หมู่ 7	บ้านโคก	Ban Khok	ชุมชน 4	โคกนคร 2000	Khok Nakhon 2000
หมู่ 8	บ้านโคก	Ban Khok	ชุมชน 5	สามัคคี	Samakkhi
หมู่ 11	บ้านโสกนาดี	Ban Sok Na Di	ชุมชน 6	นาวิลัยร่วมใจพัฒนา	Na Wilai Ruam Chai Phatthana

While I had seen lists of the Chumchon before, this is the first one where it is clear that the Chumchon correspond one-to-one to the Muban. I don't know if this is the general rule that at the creation of a municipalities the Muban become Chumchon - only for the city and town municipality the Muban loose meaning completely, but for a subdistrict municipality there are still the village headmen even for the Muban completely within the municipality. As I know hardly anything about the Chumchon I can only wildly guess here.

What is a bit confusing is the fact that the two lists give different names for two of the Muban - village 8 is either Ban Khok or Ban Khok Sanga, and village 11 either Ban Sok Na Di or Ban Nawilai. The DOPA village name list for Khon Kaen gives Ban Khok for village 8 (as in municipality list) and Ban Nawilai for village 11 (as in TAO list).

Muban list from DOPA?

In the command section of the website of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) I just noticed one notable one titled ให้จังหวัดแจ้งอำเภอและเทศบาลเร่งรัดตรวจสอบข้อมูลหมู่บ้านหรือชุมชนแล้วแต่กรณี. If I am not wrong the title translates to "[order] to provinces to advise districts and municipalities to speed up check if data of village (muban) and boroughs (chumchon) confirms with facts". Some others talk about a รายชื่อหมู่บ้านและชุมชน (list of names of villages and boroughs). This all seem to be concerned with the introduction of some new SML-based technology.

It would be great if this would enabled DOPA to publish a complete list of villages and boroughs, additional to the list of subdistricts they already have on their website. Actually, they should have all the information for the plain list with code and name, it just appears not to be public. So far I have only found incomplete ones (e.g. this), or just recently this Excel sheet from a server of the Ministry of Public Health. This second one has 58188 villages with their name and geocode, apparently as of 2005. But it must be incomplete as well, as there are more than 70,000 villages.

Incomplete geocodes list down to village level

Google helped me to find a collection of some text files containing several geocodes, however only for 14 of the 75 provinces. The thing makes these lists different from the ccaatt list from DOPA - they include the villages (muban) and also the municipalities (thesaban). The strange thing which differs it from the geocodes of the municipalities found previously is the fact they are here listed at subdistrict level, while in the other sources they are at district level. For example the city Surat Thani here has the geocode 840170, while normally it has 8499. I am a bit confused about the municipality geocodes now.

I haven't yet had the time and patience to actually go through the village codes to see if there any oddities, striking differences between the lists I found earlier, but of course I have saved all the files locally to be sure they are not lost if they remove it from the website.

The website is owned by the "Bureau of Community Enterprise Promotion", which seem to be somehow related with the One Tambon One Product (OTOP) project.

Town subdivisions

Something I haven't found any information about in English are the subdivisions of the municipalities (thesaban). It seems like every municipality is subdivided into entities named chumchon (ชุมชน), which translates to "communities". Big cities have up to 100 of these, while the small thesaban tambon usually only have just one or two. These entities are apparently at a similar level as the villages (muban). Sadly the nearly complete lists of these (and the muban) in excel sheets I found at oncb.go.th are no longer accessible, so there seems to be no online resource listing them anymore. Any information on the tasks, history and so on of these is very welcome.

At least Chiang Mai has another subdivision above the communities - a map at the city website shows four "wards" (khwaeng, แขวง). Oddly the geocode list at DOPA lists only three of the four, but also list a single ward for Nonthaburi. These are probably not the same kind of entity as the subdistricts in Bangkok, which are also named kwaeng. Again I have no ideas on the function of those.