In the meeting number 35 on July 25th, the board to consider draft laws discussed the renaming of TAO Na Duang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลนาด้วง), Na Duang district, Loei province to Kaeo Methi (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแก้วเมธี). Its the first direct change to an administrative entity discussed in these board for a year when the merge of Wang Nuea was approved. Due to bad timing, I cannot read the transcript - law.moi.go.th is still inaccessible for me from Germany, and during my visit in Thailand recently I downloaded all the PDFs of the past year but this wasn't online then yet. Thus the announcement in the Royal Gazette will show whether the board approved the change or not.
The subdistrict Na Duang (ตำบลนาด้วง) is covered by two local governments, Na Duang TAO and Na Duang subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลนาด้วง). Thus this name change can either mean that the TAO will get upgraded to a municipality soon, or it simply to clean up the name ambiguities of the former sanitary districts in preparation of the proposed upgrade of all TAO to municipalities.
The name "Kaeo Methi" is the name of village number 5 of Na Duang subdistrict, which is also the location of the TAO office.
Showing posts with label TAO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TAO. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Wang Nuea TAO to be merged with Wang Nuea municipality
There hasn't been any changes to the local governments since the upgrade of Pa Sak almost exactly two years ago, maybe due to the proposed abolish of the TAO level. However, in the meeting number 44 of the board two to consider draft laws on September 9, the merge of Wang Nuea TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลวังเหนือ) with Wang Nuea subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลวังเหนือ) was discussed. As I still cannot access moi.go.th, I can only read indirectly through the Google cache, yet what I can find in the transcript of the meeting suggests the change is forthcoming very soon - maybe directly with end of the term of the TAO council on October 19th. Waiting for the end of the council term is somewhat strange, given that the local elections are suspended since the coup in 2014 already, but it was similar with the upgrade of Pa Sak mentioned before.
The transcript states, that due to the low population in the TAO - 1949 according to the transcript, 2167 in the latest DOPA statistics - the TAO should be abolished. A poll on whether the citizen approve this dissolution has been done, asking with which local government Wang Nuea shall be merged.
The transcript states, that due to the low population in the TAO - 1949 according to the transcript, 2167 in the latest DOPA statistics - the TAO should be abolished. A poll on whether the citizen approve this dissolution has been done, asking with which local government Wang Nuea shall be merged.
- Wang Nuea municipality: 679 votes
- Ban Mai municipality: 217 votes
- Wang Sai TAO: 25 votes
- Thung Hua TAO: 5 votes
- Wang Tai TAO: 5 votes
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
All TAO to become municipalities?
Yesterday, the national reform council (สภาขับเคลื่อนการปฏิรูปประเทศ) has by a big majority approved the plan to reform the local government units. This plan still has to go through some more bureaucratic steps before becoming effective - it must be approved by the cabinet, then reviewed by the Council of State and considered by the cabinet again, and finally going through the parliament to become a law - but as all these are either the military junta themselves or their handpicked subordinates its quite likely this plan will make it to law in the not too far future.
Prachatai has a long article about this decision, but there seem to be no English sources available. Linked within the article is a scan of the draft law. Being quite lengthy and having lots of technical term I can only get a few parts of the content, the main being section 5 which states that all TAO shall become subdistrict municipalities (Thesaban Tambon), and also states that in case the name collides with an already existing other municipality the one with the highest municipal level or the one being a municipality first shall keep its name. Later sections name the various officials with the TAO, and also the provincial administrative organizaions are mentioned, but my Thai isn't good enough to get any details in these parts.
The massive upgrade of all 5334 TAO somehow resembles a similar steps done in 1999, when all the 980 sanitary districts were upgraded to subdistrict municipalities. The NCPO announcement 29/2016 already prepared for this occasion to allow the current councilors and mayor to remain in office after the upgrade, to avoid massive vacant offices until the junta believes the country is ready to resume with the local elections. I just hope it will be not just a change in naming, but also taking the chance to merge local governments where applicable, so they are able to perform the additional tasks which a subdistrict municipality has to provide to its citizen.
Prachatai has a long article about this decision, but there seem to be no English sources available. Linked within the article is a scan of the draft law. Being quite lengthy and having lots of technical term I can only get a few parts of the content, the main being section 5 which states that all TAO shall become subdistrict municipalities (Thesaban Tambon), and also states that in case the name collides with an already existing other municipality the one with the highest municipal level or the one being a municipality first shall keep its name. Later sections name the various officials with the TAO, and also the provincial administrative organizaions are mentioned, but my Thai isn't good enough to get any details in these parts.
The massive upgrade of all 5334 TAO somehow resembles a similar steps done in 1999, when all the 980 sanitary districts were upgraded to subdistrict municipalities. The NCPO announcement 29/2016 already prepared for this occasion to allow the current councilors and mayor to remain in office after the upgrade, to avoid massive vacant offices until the junta believes the country is ready to resume with the local elections. I just hope it will be not just a change in naming, but also taking the chance to merge local governments where applicable, so they are able to perform the additional tasks which a subdistrict municipality has to provide to its citizen.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
NCPO Announcement 29/2016
Today, the 29th announcement of the National Council for Peace and Order of this year (คำสั่งหัวหน้าคณะรักษาความสงบแห่งชาติ ที่ ๒๙/๒๕๕๙) was announced in the Royal Gazette, which by its publication became active law. This announcement deals with the local government administrators and councilors in case of a change in the municipal status. So far, whenever a municipality or a subdistrict administrative organization changes its administrative status, the mayor and the council have to vacate their office and stand for a new election. Especially for the council this is logical, as with the change of status the size of the council changes, thus the previously elected council doesn't fit anymore. Thus, so far usually all the municipal upgrades were done whenever the terms of either the council and/or the mayor ends, and a new election was pending anyway. However, in some cases the time till the next election was quite long, as the Election Commission first has to come up with a new constituency outline matching the new size of the council.
However, since the coup in 2014 there were no elections for the local governments anymore, by announcements 85 and 86 all of the local elections were halted and those mayors and councilors in office were given an indefinite extension of their term by announcement 1/2015. As even for a nation election the schedule is still unsure and depends on the constitutional referendum, those less important local elections certainly have to wait even longer.
I am not sure if this announcement somehow relates with an announcement by the Department of Local Administration from last week titled "แนวทางการแก้ไขปัญหาและผลกระทบจากการปรับโครงสร้างเทศบาล" (way to solve municipal restructure) - which if I understand it correctly suggests that TAO with more than 20 million Baht income should be upgraded to municipalities.
However, since the coup in 2014 there were no elections for the local governments anymore, by announcements 85 and 86 all of the local elections were halted and those mayors and councilors in office were given an indefinite extension of their term by announcement 1/2015. As even for a nation election the schedule is still unsure and depends on the constitutional referendum, those less important local elections certainly have to wait even longer.
I am not sure if this announcement somehow relates with an announcement by the Department of Local Administration from last week titled "แนวทางการแก้ไขปัญหาและผลกระทบจากการปรับโครงสร้างเทศบาล" (way to solve municipal restructure) - which if I understand it correctly suggests that TAO with more than 20 million Baht income should be upgraded to municipalities.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Local government units covering more than one subdistrict
About half a year ago, a discussion on the best outline of the Amphoe articles on the German Wikipedia raised the question how many of the subdistrict administrative organizations (SAO/TAO) don't cover the same area as the corresponding subdistrict. I couldn't answer back then, I only knew that the about 900 subdistrict municipalities created in 1999 usually cover only parts of a subdistrict, so the TAO covers the remaining parts; and I knew that especially in Ayutthaya province, several adjoining subdistricts are merged together to one single TAO. However, I could not give the actual numbers for each category of TAO.
In order to be able to give these numbers, I started to add a new XML tag to my data files, but only did this for a few provinces at first. Luckily, my fellow Wikipedian hdamm came to help and also added these tags to many of the XML files, so right now the central and southern provinces are completely tagged, as well as most of the northern provinces and some of those in the northeast. Though there are still 1285 local government missing, I think it is worth to give a partial answer now - at least to show that this blog isn't dead, I just was too busy with other tasks and thus haven't found the time to writeup good postings here.
Right now, there are 7852 local governments, of which the 76 provincial administrative organization and Bangkok are special cases which are out of this statistics. Those considered are
In order to be able to give these numbers, I started to add a new XML tag to my data files, but only did this for a few provinces at first. Luckily, my fellow Wikipedian hdamm came to help and also added these tags to many of the XML files, so right now the central and southern provinces are completely tagged, as well as most of the northern provinces and some of those in the northeast. Though there are still 1285 local government missing, I think it is worth to give a partial answer now - at least to show that this blog isn't dead, I just was too busy with other tasks and thus haven't found the time to writeup good postings here.
Right now, there are 7852 local governments, of which the 76 provincial administrative organization and Bangkok are special cases which are out of this statistics. Those considered are
- 30 cities (Thesaban Nakhon, เทศบาลนคร)
- 175 towns (Thesaban Mueang, เทศบาลเมือง)
- 2235 subdistrict municipalities (Thesaban Tambon, เทศบาลตำบล)
- 5334 subdistrict administrative organizations (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล)
- 1 special administrative area (i.e. Pattaya)
- 4497 (69%) cover exactly one subdistrict
- 1509 (23%) cover one subdistrict partially
- 485 (7%) cover more than one subdistrict at least in part (118 of these are TAO)
- 125 (2%) cover more than one subdistrict, and all of them completely (71 of these are TAO)
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Changing TAO council sizes
The size of the council of a subdistrict administrative organization (TAO) varies a lot, because every administrative village within the TAO has two elected councilors. Only in case there are less than three villages, the number of councilors per Muban is higher since the minimum size of the council is six. Thus there are TAO councils between six and more than 50 members. But not only the size of each TAO council differs, also the size of one TAO council can change - whenever a new administrative village is created, the council will be enlarged by two seats. The councilors from the village which is split are assigned to that part village in which they live, so its no necessarily the seats from the new village which will be filled in the by-election.
Now I add the council term ends in this year and thus the election dates for 2009, I stumble over several cases where the council size has changed between the 2005 and 2009 election. In those cases where I know that a new village was created during the term that change is easily explained - one example can be the TAO Chae Chang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแช่ช้าง) in San Kamphaeng district of Chiang Main province. In 2005 the council had 14 members, in 2009 it had 16 members. Today, the subdistrict contains 10 administrative villages - thus at first one would expect 20 TAO members. But village 7 is completely covered by the municipality San Kamphaeng and thus is not eligible to send councilors to the TAO council, and for village 8 the area which belongs to the TAO is unpopulated, only for Mu 6 one part of the population belongs to the municipality and another to the TAO - so effectively there are eight Muban for the TAO. And since village 10 was created in 2006 there must have been a by-election to enlarge the council shortly after the new Muban became effective.
This way I could already explain a big number of the council size changes, but sadly no all. Even though those files from where I copy my data are published by the Election Commission, they obviously contain wrong data - for example for the TAO Don Du (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลดอนดู่) in Khon Kaen province, according to the EC tables the council had a size of 18 in 2005 and 24 in 2009. But - the subdistrict has 12 villages and no area shared with any municipality, and already in 2002 it had 11 villages. Only one village was added in 2006, so the number for 2005 must have been 22, not 18. There were even a few cases where instead of the number of seats the table showed the number of constituencies (i.e. of Muban). In other cases, there were smaller councils in 2005, and in 2009 the council had two members for every Muban - but part of the subdistrict belongs to a municipality, and there were no boundary changes between TAO and municipality as far as I knew. So I have no idea why those Muban were eligible to have councilors in 2009, but not in 2005.
Apparently, the Excel sheets and PDFs from the ECT were created manually, otherwise such obvious mistakes could not happen. If I could spend more time on the programming part of my data collection project, I would easily have a small tool which could output the same tables from my collected data. But then there's still the problem that I don't have the full source data, I can only reconstruct them from those files I have. Especially whenever a mayor or a council ends its term prematurely I would have to update the data in the XML directly - but I rarely find these information at the ECT provincial websites.
Now I add the council term ends in this year and thus the election dates for 2009, I stumble over several cases where the council size has changed between the 2005 and 2009 election. In those cases where I know that a new village was created during the term that change is easily explained - one example can be the TAO Chae Chang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแช่ช้าง) in San Kamphaeng district of Chiang Main province. In 2005 the council had 14 members, in 2009 it had 16 members. Today, the subdistrict contains 10 administrative villages - thus at first one would expect 20 TAO members. But village 7 is completely covered by the municipality San Kamphaeng and thus is not eligible to send councilors to the TAO council, and for village 8 the area which belongs to the TAO is unpopulated, only for Mu 6 one part of the population belongs to the municipality and another to the TAO - so effectively there are eight Muban for the TAO. And since village 10 was created in 2006 there must have been a by-election to enlarge the council shortly after the new Muban became effective.
This way I could already explain a big number of the council size changes, but sadly no all. Even though those files from where I copy my data are published by the Election Commission, they obviously contain wrong data - for example for the TAO Don Du (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลดอนดู่) in Khon Kaen province, according to the EC tables the council had a size of 18 in 2005 and 24 in 2009. But - the subdistrict has 12 villages and no area shared with any municipality, and already in 2002 it had 11 villages. Only one village was added in 2006, so the number for 2005 must have been 22, not 18. There were even a few cases where instead of the number of seats the table showed the number of constituencies (i.e. of Muban). In other cases, there were smaller councils in 2005, and in 2009 the council had two members for every Muban - but part of the subdistrict belongs to a municipality, and there were no boundary changes between TAO and municipality as far as I knew. So I have no idea why those Muban were eligible to have councilors in 2009, but not in 2005.
Apparently, the Excel sheets and PDFs from the ECT were created manually, otherwise such obvious mistakes could not happen. If I could spend more time on the programming part of my data collection project, I would easily have a small tool which could output the same tables from my collected data. But then there's still the problem that I don't have the full source data, I can only reconstruct them from those files I have. Especially whenever a mayor or a council ends its term prematurely I would have to update the data in the XML directly - but I rarely find these information at the ECT provincial websites.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Local government terms 2009-2012
The task which kept me busy the last months was to add election data to my XML files reached a first milestone. On the website of the Election Commission, I originally found an Excel sheet with all the term ends of the local government councils and mayors in 2012, and after some more searching another Excel file for 2009 and two PDFs for 2010 and 2011. Since those files cover the last four years, in principle I should now have data for every local government unit. But actually, a few are still without - those which ended their term in 2008, but had the next election in 2009 are missing, especially the TAO upgraded to municipalities in 2008. Nevertheless an impressive number of local government units:
An example entry in the XML, taken from the subdistrict municipality Khlong Cha-un in Surat Thani, looks like this
And I am not yet done with this huge task of adding term data, in the meantime the term ends in this year were published as a PDF, and I also found another PDF with the data for 2008. This year there will be a total of 3596 term ends, again a lot of TAO end their term since it is 4th four year period since 1997 when 3637 TAO were created. And again a significant number of these I expect to be upgraded to municipalities this year.
| Year | TAO | Thesaban | PAO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2201 | 838 | 76 |
| 2011 | 550 | 333 | 3 |
| 2010 | 75 | 210 | 1 |
| 2009 | 3589 | 237 | 1 |
Notice that the last term as a TAO ended about one month before the nominal end of term because the upgrade was effective a little earlier than in most cases - normally the upgrade happens on the day after the term ended. Such cases of prematurely ended terms are the most interesting ones, and will write up some articles on some types of premature ends - the end due to a status change is the least interesting one.<council> <term begin="2012-12-16" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" /> <term begin="2008-11-09" end="2012-11-08" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" /> <term begin="2004-07-25" end="2008-06-30" type="TAO" size="26" endreason="StatusChange" /></council>
And I am not yet done with this huge task of adding term data, in the meantime the term ends in this year were published as a PDF, and I also found another PDF with the data for 2008. This year there will be a total of 3596 term ends, again a lot of TAO end their term since it is 4th four year period since 1997 when 3637 TAO were created. And again a significant number of these I expect to be upgraded to municipalities this year.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Local government elections this year
Finally I have found the page within the Election Commission website where they place the links to the most important reference lists. There is has the full results for the last three parliament elections, the latest senate election, and also the lists of the local government term ends starting in 2009. These lists keep me busy for some time already, extracting the election dates from there and adding them into the XML files.
Thus I now also have the list of all the term ends in this year, the actual election date for each of the local government unit will be chosen by the Election Commission when it reaches its term end. But since each term is exactly four years, this table now enables me the get the election dates in 2009. However, one big drawback is that the list is a PDF file, whereas for 2012 and 2009 there were Excel sheets. I was able to convert the PDF back to a Excel, but all of the vocals and other letters below or above the consonants were lost in the process, making it somewhat more difficult to work through the list.
Most of the 115 pages of the PDF are this list, but there are a few statistics at the beginning of the document as well worth mentioning here. This year, terms will end for the mayor and/or the council in 3596 local governments.
Thus I now also have the list of all the term ends in this year, the actual election date for each of the local government unit will be chosen by the Election Commission when it reaches its term end. But since each term is exactly four years, this table now enables me the get the election dates in 2009. However, one big drawback is that the list is a PDF file, whereas for 2012 and 2009 there were Excel sheets. I was able to convert the PDF back to a Excel, but all of the vocals and other letters below or above the consonants were lost in the process, making it somewhat more difficult to work through the list.
Most of the 115 pages of the PDF are this list, but there are a few statistics at the beginning of the document as well worth mentioning here. This year, terms will end for the mayor and/or the council in 3596 local governments.
- 5 Provincial Administrative Organizations (only mayors)
- 341 municipalities
- 3249 TAO
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Times between local elections
As I am now adding lots of local election details into my XML, it now becomes possible to do some automatic calculation of election statistics. Though I am far from having a full coverage of the local elections of the most recent past - right now I have 4775 council elections with at least the election date - a few quite interesting things show up.
At first, most of the local election take place on either Sunday (4244 or 89%) or Saturday (410 or 9%), but there were also election on every other weekday. But it gets more interesting when I have more than one election date for a given local council, as then it is possible to calculate the time between the end of term and the election of a new council. By law, after the end of term the next election has to take place within 45 days, however this can be extended by the Election Commission. This takes place especially when the constituencies of the election need to be changed, either because the size of the council has changed, or the population numbers within the constituencies have changed significantly.
The number of days without a council within the limited data I have so far differs from 31 days, e.g. for Chiang Mai municipality earlier this year, when it had the election on April 8, exactly one month after the term ended on March 8. Quite striking however is the longest time I have spotted so far, more than once year for Pho Sadet municipality in Nakhon Si Thammarat. The TAO Pho Sadet was upgraded to a municipality effective October 7 2011, the first day after the TAO council term had expired. However, the first election for the municipal council and municipal mayor took place on November 11 2012, more than one year after the upgrade. For whatever reason, it took so long to split the area of the subdistrict into two constituencies with roughly equal population, as the constituencies were officially announced on October 10 2012, just shortly before the election date.
Right now, the median value of interregnum lengths is 52 days, however this is mostly a selection effect since I have mostly the election data for TAO upgraded to Thesaban - as soon as I add more of the recent TAO elections the number will certainly go down. But since it such a big pile of data to work through, and only part of it as handy Excel sheets which I can convert to XML code easily. In order to show how the data is represented in the XML, below is the code for the Pho Sadet council elections, snipped to show only the most relevant parts.
<entity type="Tambon" name="โพธิ์เสด็จ" english="Pho Sadet" geocode="800118">
<office type="MunicipalityOffice">
[...]
<officials>
<official title="Mayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2012-11-11" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" />
<official title="TAOMayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" endreason="EndOfTerm" /></officials>
<council>
<term begin="2012-11-11" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" comment="Constituencies took 1 year to finish" />
<term begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" type="TAO" size="18" />
</council>
</office>
[...]
</entity>
At first, most of the local election take place on either Sunday (4244 or 89%) or Saturday (410 or 9%), but there were also election on every other weekday. But it gets more interesting when I have more than one election date for a given local council, as then it is possible to calculate the time between the end of term and the election of a new council. By law, after the end of term the next election has to take place within 45 days, however this can be extended by the Election Commission. This takes place especially when the constituencies of the election need to be changed, either because the size of the council has changed, or the population numbers within the constituencies have changed significantly.
The number of days without a council within the limited data I have so far differs from 31 days, e.g. for Chiang Mai municipality earlier this year, when it had the election on April 8, exactly one month after the term ended on March 8. Quite striking however is the longest time I have spotted so far, more than once year for Pho Sadet municipality in Nakhon Si Thammarat. The TAO Pho Sadet was upgraded to a municipality effective October 7 2011, the first day after the TAO council term had expired. However, the first election for the municipal council and municipal mayor took place on November 11 2012, more than one year after the upgrade. For whatever reason, it took so long to split the area of the subdistrict into two constituencies with roughly equal population, as the constituencies were officially announced on October 10 2012, just shortly before the election date.
Right now, the median value of interregnum lengths is 52 days, however this is mostly a selection effect since I have mostly the election data for TAO upgraded to Thesaban - as soon as I add more of the recent TAO elections the number will certainly go down. But since it such a big pile of data to work through, and only part of it as handy Excel sheets which I can convert to XML code easily. In order to show how the data is represented in the XML, below is the code for the Pho Sadet council elections, snipped to show only the most relevant parts.
<entity type="Tambon" name="โพธิ์เสด็จ" english="Pho Sadet" geocode="800118">
<office type="MunicipalityOffice">
[...]
<officials>
<official title="Mayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2012-11-11" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" />
<official title="TAOMayor" name="เกรียงศักดิ์ ด่านคงรักษ์" begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" beginreason="ElectedDirectly" endreason="EndOfTerm" /></officials>
<council>
<term begin="2012-11-11" type="ThesabanTambon" size="12" comment="Constituencies took 1 year to finish" />
<term begin="2007-10-07" end="2011-10-06" type="TAO" size="18" />
</council>
</office>
[...]
</entity>
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Bad TAO management style
Bangkok Post reported today about an incident in the TAO administration of Thaiyawat (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลไทยาวาส), Nakhon Chai Si district, Nakhon Pathom province, where the TAO mayor Somdet Suksomkit (สมเดช สุขสมกิจ) allegedly slapped his subordinate Rawipha Phuengporn (รวิภา เปิดเผยว่า), head of the finance department, into her face after she reported the bad news that his pet project was rejected. Since the whole incident was captured on video he will have a difficult stand to defend himself in the investigation - and as the video was uploaded to YouTube now everyone can judge for themselves.
It is quite likely that there will be early elections in Thaiyawat, as if found guilty he will get removed from his post and cannot fulfill his term which would have ended in September next year.
Deputy chief of Nakhon Chaisi district Yongyuth Suanthong said he had been assigned to investigate the incident. If found guilty the TAO chief could be permanently relieved from duty.It is a funny coincidence that I am currently reading the book "Women and politics in Thailand", in which several chapters stress the different job attitude of female leaders compared to male. I cannot imagine any female TAO mayor to show such an unacceptable behavior to her subordinates...
Bangkok Post, TAO chief accused of slapping subordinate, 2012-09-26
Monday, June 11, 2012
Lot of new municipalities this year
This year a lot of TAO councils will end their four year term and thus there need to be election all parts of the country - in August this year 1,669 TAO out of the 5693 TAO it still had at January 1 this year, thus 30% of them. Thus after one quiet year, this year it will have a lot of TAO upgraded to subdistrict municipalities, especially as those TAO which end their term this year are those created in 1996, the first bunch of Tambon Councils converted to Tambon Administrative Organizations. As that first bunch covered the economically strongest Tambon, there will be a lot to qualify for a upgrade now. Luckily the board meeting transcripts are back, so I can get the news on the changes quite on time.
So far I was only checking the transcripts of board two, as that is the board which normally has the issues on the local administrative units on their agenda - and the transcript overview page also contains the agenda, so I don't have to look into the transcripts itself. But since today new transcripts of board one have been uploaded, I was looking into the latest ones and quickly discovered that now both boards have these upgrades on their agenda - there are simply to many to consider for one board. Looks like the municipal upgrades will now again take quite a part of my time, posting the summaries on the Thai municipal changes blog as well as keep my XML files and the spread sheet up to date.
And a strange this to note - when I mentioned the newly available transcripts I mentioned that for me the Word documents were easier to handle than the PDF files, where some encoding issues made much more difficult to do copy-and-paste. And now both for board one and board two all new transcripts were added as Word documents again. I wonder if I have a reader within that government office, or it was just a strange coincidence.
So far I was only checking the transcripts of board two, as that is the board which normally has the issues on the local administrative units on their agenda - and the transcript overview page also contains the agenda, so I don't have to look into the transcripts itself. But since today new transcripts of board one have been uploaded, I was looking into the latest ones and quickly discovered that now both boards have these upgrades on their agenda - there are simply to many to consider for one board. Looks like the municipal upgrades will now again take quite a part of my time, posting the summaries on the Thai municipal changes blog as well as keep my XML files and the spread sheet up to date.
And a strange this to note - when I mentioned the newly available transcripts I mentioned that for me the Word documents were easier to handle than the PDF files, where some encoding issues made much more difficult to do copy-and-paste. And now both for board one and board two all new transcripts were added as Word documents again. I wonder if I have a reader within that government office, or it was just a strange coincidence.
Friday, March 9, 2012
TAO council and Muban creations
The council of the subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO, อบต) consists of two elected councilors for every administrative village (Muban) within the TAO, thus in most cases the double amount of Muban within the subdistrict. Though lately only very few new administrative villages have been created, in such a case something has to happen with the TAO council. On the FAQ page of the Office of Province Election Commission Singburi I have stumbled on a corresponding question with the official answer:
And obviously, the new Muban also means that a new village headman has to be elected, and also in that Muban which has no headman - thus in case the headman of the village was was split lives in the area of the newly created Muban, the "old" Muban has to elect.
ตั้งหมู่บ้านใหม่ต้องเลือก ส.อบตใหม่หรือไม่Thus, with the creation of a new Muban there has to be a by-election for the TAO council to fill the vacant spaces. A bit strange is the final clause, especially would think one village having 4 councilors would already be enough to make the election unnecessary. However, these last cases can only happen if a councilor moves his residence from one Muban to another, or the areas of two Muban get modified so his residence gets moved into a different administrative village.
หากมีการประกาศตั้งและกําหนดเขตหมู่บ้านขึ้นใหม่โดยมีการแยกหมู่บ้านออกเป็นสองหมู่บ้าน และจัดตั้งหมู่บ้านขึ้นใหม่กรณีนี้จะมีการเลือกตั้ง ส.อบต. เพิ่มเติมหรือไม่
If create new village have to elect TAO council?
If it has an announcement to set up and specify the area of a village by splitting it into two, does the new village have to elect additional members of the TAO council?
กรณีดังกล่าวจะต้องจัดให้มีการเลือกตั้ง ส.อบต.เพิ่มเติม โดยตรวจสอบก่อนว่าหมู่บ้านเดิมที่ถูกตัดแยก หรือหมู่บ้านที่แยกออกไป มี ส.อบต.ในเขตหมู่บ้านดังกล่าวหรือไม่ เท่าใด หากไม่มี หรือมีไม่ครบ 2 คน ก็จะต้องประกาศให้มีการเลือกตั้ง จนครบ 2 คนตามที่กฎหมายกำหนด เว้นแต่ตำบลใด มี 1 หมู่บ้าน ให้มี ส.อบต. ได้ 6 คน หากมี 2 หมู่บ้านให้มีได้หมู่บ้านละ 3 คน
In this case, one has to check first if the the new village or the village from which it was split off has a councilor residing in the area already. If there are none or less than two, then have to announce an election until it has 2 councilors as required by law, unless there is one Muban which has 6 councilors or two Muban which have three.
And obviously, the new Muban also means that a new village headman has to be elected, and also in that Muban which has no headman - thus in case the headman of the village was was split lives in the area of the newly created Muban, the "old" Muban has to elect.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Local governments on Google Plus
Even though most of the social networking still happens on Facebook, I personally prefer the much cleaner and more professional looking Google Plus by far. So naturally I also tried if there are any of the local governments - municipalities, TAO or PAO - who are using Google Plus as well, or at least have registered there. Sadly, most have just registered there (and many as a person and not as a page, the way Google intended it), but below is a table of those I have found so far.
Though Twitter is not exactly a social networking site, I have collected the few who have found their way there in a user list which can be easily followed as well - but not surprisingly there is very few activity, of all those who created an account on Twitter only few have actually used it for more than a short testing period. Currently active are only the municipalities Mueang Phon in Khon Kaen and Nong Khai. Whenever I discover a new Twitter account I will of course add it to that list, so anyone interested can just subscribe the list.
Additionally, I also add all these links into my XML as well, which can then look like this
- Sao Thong Hin municipality (เทศบาลตำบลเสาธงหิน), Nonthaburi - a few flood photos from November last year are the only activity.
- Bang Muang municipality (เทศบาลตำบลบางม่วง), Nonthaburi. Only activity so far was the upload of their emblem as the user picture.
- Chanthanimit town (เทศบาลเมืองจันทนิมิต), Chanthaburi - no activity at all.
- Nong Bua Sala TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลหนองบัวศาลา), Nakhon Ratchasima - several post in October last year, but nothing since then.
- Doi Saket municipality (เทศบาลตำบลดอยสะเก็ด), Chiang Mai - only uploaded emblem and a sketch map.
- Thung Hua Chang municipality (เทศบาลตำบลทุ่งหัวช้าง), Lamphun - only two photos uploaded so far.
- Ngao municipality (เทศบาลตําบลหงาวหงาว), Chiang Rai - only the emblem.
- Mae Sariang municipality (เทศบาลตำบลแม่สะเรียง), Mae Hong Son - no activity at all.
- Bang Bai Mai TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบางใบไม้), Surat Thani - no activity yet, at least they choose correctly to create a page and not a user profile.
- Wang Mai municipality (เทศบาลตำบลวังใหม่), Chumphon - the only one really continually active, and correctly set up as a page as well.
- Pa Bon municipality (เทศบาลตำบลป่าบอน), Phatthalung - only emblem.
- Thung Hong municipality (เทศบาลตำบลทุ่งโฮ้ง), Phrae - only emblem.
Though Twitter is not exactly a social networking site, I have collected the few who have found their way there in a user list which can be easily followed as well - but not surprisingly there is very few activity, of all those who created an account on Twitter only few have actually used it for more than a short testing period. Currently active are only the municipalities Mueang Phon in Khon Kaen and Nong Khai. Whenever I discover a new Twitter account I will of course add it to that list, so anyone interested can just subscribe the list.
Additionally, I also add all these links into my XML as well, which can then look like this
<socialweb> <facebook>http://www.facebook.com/bangkoknoi</facebook> <twitter>BangkoknoiDist</twitter> <blog>http://bangkoknoidist.blogspot.com/</blog> </socialweb>
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Subdistrict headmen with a different title
When I was checking the website of Mae O subdistrict administrative organization (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแม่อ้อ) in Chiang Rai, I found that unlike most websites of local government units they not only present their current personnel, but also the past chairmen of the TAO were listed on a separate page. Starting with the chairman of the Tambon Council (ประธานสภาตำบล), who was ex officio also the subdistrict headman, two more chairmen elected by the council (ประธานกรรมการบริหารองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล) and since 2002 the directly elected chairmen (นายกองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล). Sadly there's no explanation for the more than one year without any office holder from 2004 to 2006. Anyway, such complete lists of office holders are rare to find, and even more rare the past TAO council chairmen or the TAO clerks are lists.
But even more interesting is the history page, which is in fact the history of the subdistrict and not just of the TAO. And here all the previous subdistrict headmen are also listed. The notable part is the title given for the headmen before 1978 (until headmen number 10), which are listed as Pho Khwaen (พ่อแคว่น), literally "father of land/region". I guess it was only the local name for the headman, who still officially had the title "Kamnan", as already back in 1908 the names for the subdivisions and their leader were consolidated. Before that year, in the north the subdistricts were named Khwaen, and the headmen Nai Khwaen (นายแคว้น). As the table was reconstructed and the compiler did not know the years for the headmen before 1974, the title Pho Khwaen might also be simply due to the fact that the compile did not remember when the title Kamnan became official.
But even more interesting is the history page, which is in fact the history of the subdistrict and not just of the TAO. And here all the previous subdistrict headmen are also listed. The notable part is the title given for the headmen before 1978 (until headmen number 10), which are listed as Pho Khwaen (พ่อแคว่น), literally "father of land/region". I guess it was only the local name for the headman, who still officially had the title "Kamnan", as already back in 1908 the names for the subdivisions and their leader were consolidated. Before that year, in the north the subdistricts were named Khwaen, and the headmen Nai Khwaen (นายแคว้น). As the table was reconstructed and the compiler did not know the years for the headmen before 1974, the title Pho Khwaen might also be simply due to the fact that the compile did not remember when the title Kamnan became official.
Monday, August 22, 2011
More TAO upgrades?
On Friday the Royal Gazette had two announcements containing the constituencies of municipalities, normally the last step of a municipal upgrade or area change. The first of the two contains the constituencies for Wichianburi town, which was just recently upgraded, however the second one is rather surprising. Not only that it was published just two days after it was signed - normally these announcements take about 3 months until they show up in the Gazette, thus often after the election with the newly defined constituencies had been held already - the most notable thing about is the fact that I haven't seen anything about this municipality to exist before.
Tha Khanun (ท่าขนุน) in Thong Pha Phum district of Kanchanburi province covers the area of the subdistrict Tha Khanun outside the municipality Thong Pha Phum, which only covers the area around the district office. The upgrade is neither mentioned in the DOLA list of municipal changes of fiscal year 2011, nor does the website of the TAO mention it in any way. Sadly there are still no board meeting transcripts for this year, so I am left to speculating that this TAO is the first of the upgrades for fiscal year 2012 (which starts in October), and unlike previous cases the Election Commission has prepared the constituencies before the upgrade took place, to allow the municipal elections to take place within the 60 days after the end of term of the TAO council - and not many months later like it would be if the constituencies aren't ready at the time of upgrade, which according to the dates in the Royal Gazette announcement seems to have been the standard case in the previous years.
Tha Khanun (ท่าขนุน) in Thong Pha Phum district of Kanchanburi province covers the area of the subdistrict Tha Khanun outside the municipality Thong Pha Phum, which only covers the area around the district office. The upgrade is neither mentioned in the DOLA list of municipal changes of fiscal year 2011, nor does the website of the TAO mention it in any way. Sadly there are still no board meeting transcripts for this year, so I am left to speculating that this TAO is the first of the upgrades for fiscal year 2012 (which starts in October), and unlike previous cases the Election Commission has prepared the constituencies before the upgrade took place, to allow the municipal elections to take place within the 60 days after the end of term of the TAO council - and not many months later like it would be if the constituencies aren't ready at the time of upgrade, which according to the dates in the Royal Gazette announcement seems to have been the standard case in the previous years.
Friday, April 15, 2011
TAO offices in Nakhon Phanom on youtube
I was looking for the website of one of the TAO in Mueang Nakhon Phanom district, a found the blog mueangnakhonphanom - which however does not look like a real blog, but an attempt to use blogspot as free webspace provider. But nevertheless, the many photos there include some of the TAO offices, and also for some subdistricts it includes village lists.
Yet the even more interesting part was found in the sidebar - videos featuring the TAO offices within the district. The one embedded here is from Kurukhu (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลกุรุคุ).
As leknkp uploaded many videos, I have collected those on the TAO offices in a playlist, 23 videos including a few from other districts. I haven't yet seen them all in detail, which I really need to do - for example the video on At Samat shows a table with the past TAO chairmen and mayors as well as chairmen of the TAO council - data which I could not find on the website of the TAO. And I also want to find the offices in Google Earth, while it is easy to recognize the building with the help of the video, the difficult part is to know where to look - sadly I cannot find any geotags within the videos.
Another interesting video by leknkp are an interview with a TAO mayor in Na Kae district, and I am sure there are more I haven't spotted yet.
Yet the even more interesting part was found in the sidebar - videos featuring the TAO offices within the district. The one embedded here is from Kurukhu (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลกุรุคุ).
As leknkp uploaded many videos, I have collected those on the TAO offices in a playlist, 23 videos including a few from other districts. I haven't yet seen them all in detail, which I really need to do - for example the video on At Samat shows a table with the past TAO chairmen and mayors as well as chairmen of the TAO council - data which I could not find on the website of the TAO. And I also want to find the offices in Google Earth, while it is easy to recognize the building with the help of the video, the difficult part is to know where to look - sadly I cannot find any geotags within the videos.
Another interesting video by leknkp are an interview with a TAO mayor in Na Kae district, and I am sure there are more I haven't spotted yet.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Corruption in TAO offices
The Nation had a very interesting article recently titled Tambon chief backs more roles for local people, which is kind of an interview with Bamrung Kayotha (บำรุง คะโยธา), TAO mayor of Sai Na Wang (and not Saphan Wah as claimed by The Nation) in Kalasin province.
Corruption after recent TAO elections involved using the budget to construct an asphalt road on top of a smooth reinforced concrete road only 12 months after it was built so that these representatives would get a cut from the construction firm. There is also corruption in the deals for local school milk, with about Bt10 satang per pack being siphoned off to the TAO chief. Another area of corruption is the purchase of a garbage truck, which is not really needed for a small community.Another point he raises is something I also noticed previously
Many TAOs also like to have an elaborate office to boost the ego of the TAO chief, Bamrung said. Corruption is encouraged by undertaking expensive construction work, he said, while adding that his TAO office is arguably the most modest in the Kingdom, being just a one-storey wooden structure.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Websites moving to go.th domains
Recently I found a list of all the local administration heads in Suphanburi province, although a bit outdated as it seems to be last updated in 2008. While I worked through that list and added the names in the Suphanburi XML, I also tried to verify the names with the websites of the corresponding municipalities and TAO. Even though about a year ago I had worked through all the provinces and added all the websites, in just the short time since then several local governments moved their website to a new location, as well as some which completely disappeared and other which got their very first website.
One thing which was noticeable for those websites which had changed their location was the trend from the generic top level domain com (and less common org and net) to the Thai government domain suffix go.th. Which is actually the much more fitting domain, especially if one remembers that the com originally stood for commercial, quite the opposite with government units. Also, these domain have the big advantage that they cannot get taken over by domain grabbers in case the administrator forgets to renew the name registration - lets not forget the infamous ProtectTheKing "hacking". Only thing which I don't like is the fact that there is no way to find the website of a given local government unit other than using Google - all kinds of romanization schemes are used, especially for the non-unique names one can find websites of different municipalities/TAO at any thinkable of the spelling variants.
But back to the subjective trend of moving into the go.th domain. A few examples of moves are below.
But for every rule there's the exception, this one from Nakhon Phanom province. The TAO Phra Klang Thung was previously found at praklang.go.th but is now at praklang.com.
One thing which was noticeable for those websites which had changed their location was the trend from the generic top level domain com (and less common org and net) to the Thai government domain suffix go.th. Which is actually the much more fitting domain, especially if one remembers that the com originally stood for commercial, quite the opposite with government units. Also, these domain have the big advantage that they cannot get taken over by domain grabbers in case the administrator forgets to renew the name registration - lets not forget the infamous ProtectTheKing "hacking". Only thing which I don't like is the fact that there is no way to find the website of a given local government unit other than using Google - all kinds of romanization schemes are used, especially for the non-unique names one can find websites of different municipalities/TAO at any thinkable of the spelling variants.
But back to the subjective trend of moving into the go.th domain. A few examples of moves are below.
- Ban Chan TAO, Galyani Vadhana district, Chiang Mai moved from banghang.org to banchan.go.th
- Bak Ruea TAO, Maha Chana Chai district, Yasothon moved from bakreu.co.cc (still online) to bakruea.go.th
- Dong Yai TAO, Wapi Pathum district, Maha Sarakham moved from tamboldongyai.org to dongyai.go.th
But for every rule there's the exception, this one from Nakhon Phanom province. The TAO Phra Klang Thung was previously found at praklang.go.th but is now at praklang.com.
Friday, January 7, 2011
TAO office outside the Tambon?
So far I believed that the office of the local administrations is always located within the area they administer. But when I was working through the TAO of Tak province, and tried to add the locations of the offices into the XML as well, the TAO Ban Na came out oddly. When I first found a placemark labeled with it in Longdo map, I already wondered why it is located so close to the district office and thus within Sam Ngao subdistrict, so I put the location into the XML only as a comment. Anyway, there's no building directly at the mark, even for the district office I had to guess a bit as none of the buildings looked like the normal large district office buildings.
Now I looked into them again, I tried again to verify the location, but none of the other sources gave anything - Wikimapia only marks one school around there. The website of the TAO Ban Na was offline, but still in the Google cache, and there I found the address - องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบ้านนา (ที่ว่าการอำเภอสามเงาหลังเก่า) ม.5 ต.สามเงา อ.สามเงา จ.ตาก (TAO Ban Na, old district office Sam Ngao, Mu 5, Sam Ngao subdistrict, Sam Ngao district, Tak province). Now there are of course TAO which cover more than one subdistrict, but this is not the case here - Ban Na only covers the subdistrict Ban Na, whereas Sam Ngao subdistrict is shared between TAO Sam Ngao and the Sam Ngao subdistrict municipality.
Once I found with Wikimapia that there is a new district office located close to the Bhumipol dam airport, the old district office as the location of the TAO Ban Na became easy to place. But still, it is located within the boundaries of the municipality and thus well outside the area which is governed from there. Finally, I even succeeded to locate the municipality office, close to the new district office, only the location for the TAO Sam Ngao I failed to find.
Now I am just wondering why this TAO is such a special case. One reason could be of course the topography on Ban Na subdistrict, which covers only the mountainous areas around the Bhumipol lake and therefore hardly any bigger settlement with the infrastructure for an office building. The whole subdistrict has just a population of 2145. And I am of course wondering if this is the only such case, or if there are any other offices located outside their area of responsibility.
Now I looked into them again, I tried again to verify the location, but none of the other sources gave anything - Wikimapia only marks one school around there. The website of the TAO Ban Na was offline, but still in the Google cache, and there I found the address - องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบ้านนา (ที่ว่าการอำเภอสามเงาหลังเก่า) ม.5 ต.สามเงา อ.สามเงา จ.ตาก (TAO Ban Na, old district office Sam Ngao, Mu 5, Sam Ngao subdistrict, Sam Ngao district, Tak province). Now there are of course TAO which cover more than one subdistrict, but this is not the case here - Ban Na only covers the subdistrict Ban Na, whereas Sam Ngao subdistrict is shared between TAO Sam Ngao and the Sam Ngao subdistrict municipality.
Once I found with Wikimapia that there is a new district office located close to the Bhumipol dam airport, the old district office as the location of the TAO Ban Na became easy to place. But still, it is located within the boundaries of the municipality and thus well outside the area which is governed from there. Finally, I even succeeded to locate the municipality office, close to the new district office, only the location for the TAO Sam Ngao I failed to find.
Now I am just wondering why this TAO is such a special case. One reason could be of course the topography on Ban Na subdistrict, which covers only the mountainous areas around the Bhumipol lake and therefore hardly any bigger settlement with the infrastructure for an office building. The whole subdistrict has just a population of 2145. And I am of course wondering if this is the only such case, or if there are any other offices located outside their area of responsibility.
Monday, January 3, 2011
TAO executives pay rise
One controversial topic last month was the pay rise for the executives of the Tambon Administrative Organizations (TAO). From what I read about that in the English news, it sounded like that only the TAO mayors (นายกองค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล) will get a raise by about 100% to about 18,000 Baht per month. This drastic raise as well as the weak rationale for it - to bring the salary of the TAO leaders back in line with those of municipalities and Provincial Administrative Organizations who got a similar raise earlier last year - of course asked for criticism. As the Political Prisoners blog stated, these leaders of the local administration units are quite often the ones who control the votes in their area. Even though vote buying is of course illegal, these local influential politicians control the vote mongers, as well as could already help a candidate simply by their vote recommendation.
Now I could find the corresponding announcement in the Royal Gazette - interestingly already signed December 3, so two weeks before it was first discussed in cabinet - it shows a somewhat more differentiated picture. Strangely the announcement on the previous raise does not include the actual salaries, but it was 6 years ago, so the 100% raise reduces to a 16% annual raise, still not bad but much less outrageous. And, it is not just the TAO mayors who get a raise, also its deputy and the chairman and councilors of the TAO council get a higher salary or allowance; and the actual salary also depends on the income of the TAO, so by far not every TAO mayor will receive the 18,400 Baht, those in the least productive TAOs will just get 15,800.
Now I could find the corresponding announcement in the Royal Gazette - interestingly already signed December 3, so two weeks before it was first discussed in cabinet - it shows a somewhat more differentiated picture. Strangely the announcement on the previous raise does not include the actual salaries, but it was 6 years ago, so the 100% raise reduces to a 16% annual raise, still not bad but much less outrageous. And, it is not just the TAO mayors who get a raise, also its deputy and the chairman and councilors of the TAO council get a higher salary or allowance; and the actual salary also depends on the income of the TAO, so by far not every TAO mayor will receive the 18,400 Baht, those in the least productive TAOs will just get 15,800.
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