@Amphoe competition

While I was in Thailand in summer, I collected the paper version of the first two issues of the @amphoe magazine published by the Department of Provincial Administration. Issue one my wife picked at the province hall in Trang - the staff there was very reluctant to give it away, and refused to give her a copy of issue two even though there were many boxes for delivery in that office. So I got issue two from the province hall in Phatthalung instead, while I was doing a short photo walk in the government complex my wife picked the magazine, this time from a much friendlier official. While waiting for me, they discovered a photo competition, asking to send photos with the magazine, so just for fun my mother-in-law posed in front of the province hall showing the magazine and submitted the photo. Everyone already forgot about that competition, so I was quite surprised to see my mother-in-law in the latest Facebook post showing the winning photos.

Hope that short she won will be large enough I can wear it as well when visiting next time - without my interest into these topics nobody of my family would have ever noticed that magazine anyway. And I am now looking forward to see the third issue of the magazine, it is already advertised on Facebook so at least the online version should show up soon. Lets see if it gives me chance for some nitpicking again...

Amphoe created without being King Amphoe

The second issue for the @Amphoe magazine is already available for online reading - hope I can grab a paper copy of this and if possible also the first issue during my forthcoming visit in Thailand - and as a pleasant surprise the amount of English content has increased a lot. Same as in the first issue, the English section "Thing you may not know about Administration" on page 23 is the most interesting, this time it explains that while most Amphoe (อำเภอ, districts) are created as King Amphoe (กิ่งอำเภอ, minor districts), there are a few special cases which were directly created as Amphoe.

Though both King Amphoe and Amphoe are at the same administrative level, the creation of a minor district can be done by a ministerial act, whereas the creation of Amphoe (as well as the upgrade of King Amphoe to Amphoe) need a Royal Act. As the government decided in 2007 to stop using the minor districts to make the administration easier and upgrade all the minor districts to full districts, now all new districts will be created directly as full districts. So far, there was only one, Galyani Vadhana in Chiang Mai created 2009, and probably those two new districts in Yala.

Sadly, the article in this issue however has two problems. Most notably is the fact that the author did not use the official recommended transcriptions of the district names - for example Yasotorn instead of Yasothon - and even within the article uses both "Mueang" and "Mueng". Much less obvious is the claim that the only districts which were created without being King Amphoe are the five Chaloem Phra Kiat districts and four districts named after Royals. I had to check my XML files to confirm that there are more, though not that many. Below is the full list with all cases since the 1932 revolution.

• 2009: Galyani Vadhana, Chiang Mai [Gazette]
• 1998: Wachirabarami, Phichit [Gazette]
• 1996: Chaleom Phra Kiat in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Buriram, Nakhon Ratchasima, Nan and Saraburi [Gazette]
• 1994: Chulabhorn, Nakhon Si Thammarat [Gazette]
• 1993: Pathum Ratchawongsa, Ubon Ratchathani (now Amnat Charoen) [Gazette] - this one is missing in @Amphoe
• 1991: Sirindhorn, Ubon Ratchathani [Gazette]
• 1970: Tak Fa, Nakhon Sawan [Gazette] - this and all earlier are missing in @Amphoe as well
• 1968: Muak Lek, Saraburi [Gazette]
• 1966: Chonnabot, Khon Kaen [Gazette]
• 1966: Phaya Thai, Phra Nakhon (now Bangkok) [Gazette]
• 1958: Si Chiang Mai, Nong Khai [Gazette]
• 1943: Chum Phae, Khon Kaen [Gazette]
• 1939: Sam Ngam, Phichit [Gazette]

Just hope the editor takes my nitpicking Facebook comment as constructive criticism, as I love to see the topics of this blog getting a somewhat bigger audience with this magazine. And maybe I'll make it into the errata section of the next issue...

@amphoe

The Department of Provincial Administration is starting a new public relations magazine named @amphoe, which seems to be part of their project Amphoe Yim (อำเภอยิ้ม, smiling district) running for some years already. Right now the first issue is only available in digital form, and if I understand it correctly the printed version will be out middle of May. They also did a Facebook page to promote this magazine.

The magazine is of course predominantly in Thai, but there are a few pages with English text as well, e.g. on page 23 a section named "Things you may not know about administration" includes the answer why there are only 76 provinces and not 77 as many wrongly believe. Though I cannot read much of the Thai text, the paper version would be a nice addition to my library. Anyone could grab me an issue and I will pick it up when I am in Thailand again in July?

I am not sure if this new magazine will replace the long-running Thesaphiban magazine also published by DOPA, or will be a more general-public supplement.

DOPA headmen magazine

Cover 10/1998

Some years ago, I posted about the Thesaphiban magazine published by the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) as its internal magazine to reach all the various offices in a less formal way. Now by some random googling I have noticed that there is a second similar magazine, also published by DOPA but targeted to the lower admninistrative levels - the village and subdistrict headmen.

This magazine, titled "กำนัน ผู้ใหญ่บ้าน" (Subdistrict headman, Village headman) is also a monthly magazine, first published on December 5 1949. Sadly, it seems it is only available in paper copies, I haven't been able to see any downloadable PDFs of it. All the online information on it is rather well hidden on the DOPA website, and very outdated - from the starting page on the magazine one can only find the covers and table of contents of the years 1998 and 2002. But the magazine is still in print, just few days before I discovered the magazine, the Public Relation Department issued a short advert with the details on how to subscribe. Thus the magazine costs 216 Baht for one year, but to subscribe or get any further details one has to call a number within DOPA - funnily at the extension number 404.

There is not much else to find about this magazine on the web, the only other interesting thing are some scans of a 1957 issue, which is apparently for sale. Though probably one could find more old issues at the Chutachak weekend market - haven't been there for long time, and never browsed through the book and magazine part of the market. Though I probably won't be able to read and understand much, I would certainly love to get one (current) issue of this magazine (and the Thesaphiban magazine)...

Municipality with its own magazine

The amount of public relation work done by the various local government entities varies a great deal. While several especially in the poorer Northeast don't even have a website, I've now come across one municipality which even publishes a quarterly magazine, covering 36 pages.

Simply named สำโรงใต้ (Samrong Tai) same as the municipality in Phra Pradaeng district, Samut Prakan province, several past issues are available as (scanned) PDF files from the website of the municipality. As it is only scans, the PDF is of course a bit bigger (3 MB for the January 2009 issue), and especially for someone not being able to read Thai yet any copy-and-paste of the text into Google Translate or Thai2English is impossible.

The magazine is already in its 11th year of publishing, thus it was started shortly after the sanitary district Samrong Tai was upgraded to a subdistrict municipality in 1997 (Gazette).

DOLA magazine

The Department of Local Administration (DOLA) has its own monthly magazine named ท้องถิ่นไทย meaning something like "Local Thai". Unlike the similar magazine from DOPA, at least parts of the magazine are downloadable as PDF from the DOLA website.

Though I cannot read much, at least I can recognize some topics by looking at these PDF. So the latest issue online from January 2009 (but mistitled as มกราคม 2551 on the website) includes a report on the city administration of Munich, including a portrait of the mayor Christian Ude (คริสเตียน อูเด). Munich is referred to as เทศบาลนครมิวนิค, and in a later photo one can see the giant ballot papers due to the complicated voting procedures including cumulative voting.

It seems each issue has around 100 pages. The magazine is now in its 5th year, it was started in December 2004. According to the order form it costs 700 Baht per year, and probably not found in the normal bookstores like the normal for-profit magazines.

Thesaphiban magazine

Both the Department of Provincial Administration as well as amphoe.com recently placed "adverts" on their websites linking to their own publications, including some monthly magazines. Both link to another website called amphoeyim.com (อำเภอยิ้ม), meaning "district smile".

On that site there seem to be two magazines, one named Amphoeyim MAG same as the website, but it seems to be nothing interesting - one of the few things I can recognize is a horoscope - so I presume it's a magazine to entertain the employees at the various offices under the provincial administration. The second one is much more interesting - but sadly unlike the first only the title page and the preface are available online. At DOPA it also has the table of contents for some older issues (1998-2004), but scanned at a rather low resolution and thus hardly readable. This magazine is named Thesaphiban (นิตยสารเทศาภิบาล), the term used for the Thai administrative reforms at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, that magazine dates back to these times, as was created by Prince Damrong to publicize news on his reforms to his subordinates and the local officers. The first issue was published on April 1 1906, so it celebrated its centenary just shortly ago. In the book "Provincial Administration of Siam" on these reforms by Tej Bunnag many footnotes refer to this magazine as a source. So it's interesting to see this magazine is still around after such a long time.

Though the contents is probably still way beyond my Thai reading abilities, it is still sad that this magazine is only available in the paper edition, even though it is produced by the government and thus not printed for profit they don't make it easily accessible online. I don't recall noticing this magazine in the bookstores before, but now I know about it I will try to catch myself a copy next time I'm in Bangkok for sure.