This year I happened to stop over in Phetchaburi two times, and used the time to collect photos of the administrative offices. Which was rather easy as they are all located close to each other on Ratchawithi road, and easy to find as on Phetkasem from bangkok it's just driving straight on instead of taking the turn to the south next to Khao Wang.
When driving that way, the first place to see is the city pillar shrine (Lak Mueang), a small shrine located in a nice park with the wooden pillar covered by gold in the center. And as it has a pond within the park, one can of course by food to feed the fish inside. And also as usual with such attractions, it has several souvenir carts as well as small eateries at the parking lot.
The actual offices are located 500 meter further down the street. Starting on the northern side, it has the district office (ที่ว่าการอำเภอ) of Mueang Phetchaburi district first. As there are a few additional buildings between the office and the street I could not get the standard view of the whole office this time - and now I look at the building in Google Earth again I think I have been on the backside only and thus missed the better view on the other side - so I have to return there to check next time.
A few buildings further down the street comes the municipality office (สำนักงานเทศบาล) of the town (thesaban mueang) Phetchaburi (เทศบาลเมืองเพชรบุรี).
Now turning south to the other side of the road it has the province hall (ศาลากลางจังหวัด), the central administration for the whole province. I am not sure what were the two smaller buildings in between - maybe the PAO office is among them-, but then on the other end of the block opposite the district office it has the provincial court (ศาลจังหวัด).
In every province the district (Amphoe, อำเภอ) which contains the province hall is named same as the province, with the word Mueang (เมือง) added - with the exception of Ayutthaya province, where both the province and the district are named Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya (พระนครศรีอยุธยา). And of course Bangkok, which is not a province in the normal sense anyway. On the other hand, there are four districts which have that work in their name without being the capital district.
Since 1938, all newly established provinces had their central district renamed accordingly, also for those provinces temporarily abolished in 1943 the Mueang was removed. There are however two further exceptions, of the four provinces annexed during World War II both Lan Chang and Phibun Songkhram had no district named Mueang.In essence, the proposed administrative model calls for the dissolution of all the existing provincial administrative organizations, the tambon administrative organizations and the municipalities on ground that they are duplicating one another and they have little access to the people.Thus the first proposal is very similar to the administrative structure in Bangkok, which is well-established there, and should not pose that much legal difficulties to create it in other parts of the country as well.
Instead, it proposed the creation of three “nakhons” (cities) namely the Pattani City, Yala City and Narathiwat City, each with its own administrators to be elected by people in the three provinces. The three special zone cities will coordinate with the central government in Bangkok through the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, an independent body answerable to the prime minister.
Another model, to be called “Pattani Maha Nakhon” (Greater Pattani City) which combines the three southernmost provinces plus four districts of Songkhla together under one single administrative body, has also been floated. It was further reported that a law calling for the creation of this administrative model was being drafted by Akkacha Promsoot, a member of the Political Development Assembly
Local administrative organisations top the list of state agencies embezzling public funds allocated for procurement and development schemes, a government report says.This fits with the survey published by the US-based NGO Asia Foundation in September on the opinions of Thai people to many questions regarding the constitution, the state of democracy and quality of administration. The full report is published as a 117 page PDF which can be freely downloaded. Question 12.5 targets the corruptions in local administration, which however includes both the local government as well as the local officials of the central government.
The report, by the Office of the Permanent Secretary under the PM's Office, looked into alleged irregularities in the use of state budgets for the 2009 fiscal year, which ended Sept 30.
[...]
The office was able to conclude its investigations into 67 cases and retrieve 17 million baht. Thirty-three staff were dismissed and 30 had their salaries cut. About 40 cases have gone to the public prosecutors and the courts.
Some people say that it is often necessary to pay bribes to civil servants if you need something from the government, such as papers, permits, or documents. Others say that this is not true and that the civil servants are48% of the answers said yes, bribery is necessary, another 48% said no, and 3% had no opinion. And when asked about personal experience with bribery in the past 5 years, 26% confirmed that they at least personally know someone who had to pay bribes. The authors of the study aren't sure whether the fact that only have of those thinking that bribery is wide-spread actually have direct knowledge is due to a lower than perceived number of corrupt officials or simply due to the fact that many did not have to contact authorities recently.
honest. Which view is closer to your own? (Q77)
Thus same as last time, the election will be split in to rounds. At first 14 district councils in the north and east of the city (see map) will see their end of term on April 29 2010, and therefore will have new election in June; whereas the term of other 36 district councils as well as the metropolitan council end on July 22, so the second round of elections is expected for September. I still have to research a lot on the local government of Bangkok, even the number of councillors I only just learned from the news article about their requested pay rise. As there are 357 Bangkok municipal councillors, the district councils cannot have equal sizes, and with the planned new district these numbers will change for sure.
กรุงเทพมหานครอยู่ระหว่างการพิจารณาดำเนินการแบ่งพื้นที่เขตของเขตบางแค ออกเป็นNot surprising that Bang Khae is the district to be split, since it is the one with the highest population of all the 50 districts. So I suspect the boundary changes of the subdistrict in Bang Khae earlier this year were already in preparation of this split, now the Phetkasem highway could be the natural boundary of the two new districts, since it splits the current district in two approximate equal halves.
๒ เขตการปกครอง ซึ่งในขณะนี้อยู่ระหว่างการดำเนินการจัดทำรายละเอียดคำบรรยายแนวพื้นที่เขต และแผนที่แนบท้ายประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย
Bangkok is considering to split the area of Bang Khae district to become 2 administrative districts. Currently it is at compiling the detailed boundary description and map to send to the Ministry of Interior.
It is interesting to note that Pa Kaa village lies outside the Tambon boundary (in neighbouring Pai district in fact), if the data provided by NNCO are correct. To date there exist no reliable maps from the Royal Survey Department indicating Tambon boundaries and work is in progress to produce this data, yet the provincial office gives the total area of Huai Poo Ling as 37,152 ha. As far as land use planning is concerned it is important to note that there are overlapping areas claimed by adjacent villages (marked in pink), which may lead to conflicting claims over its use.So while the contradicting maps I had run into were a different case, in the lower scales the boundaries are sometimes not yet completely defined. Maybe the announcements in the Royal Gazette I spotted last year and dubbed "Tambon area clarifications" are the result of such mapping work mentioned as being in progress in the paper.
It is well-known that being a village head man is one of the riskiest positions. You do not have to have any statistics to prove this statement. For Leader Dee’s case, he was attacked 4 times and survived. If he were a Buddhist, he would have called it a miracle or, he might pray a thousand times to his Buddha amulet hanging around his neck. But as a Muslim, he believes that this is a test from “Allah”.Not surprisingly he is shown in the photos wearing a bullted proof vest, and His place was surrounded by sandbags and the curtain trees; it was similar to the military camps in the three southernmost provinces. But despite the martial look, he is doing his best to return peace into his small realm.
“It’s a mess. We don’t know what’s going on. The people who are in the middle become victims of the group that intended to use violence for their own benefits.” He concluded.I can only recommend to read the interview completely, it gives the conflict a face which in the news reports is only numbers of dead people.
Because of these reasons, after Leader Dee announced officially to fight as the village headman, he also announced that he will decrease the number of violence in this village and will protect the life of every soldier that camped in this area.
| Department of Local Administration (DOLA) | 136,152.3 |
| Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) | 24,705.1 |
| Ministry of Interior (MOI) | 195,574.1 |
After the Buddha spent seven days at Doi Kung he came down from the mountain and journeyed north through a forest for a distance of approximately 20,000 meters to the Mae Ping river. There he met a Lawa farmer who was using a wheel to irrigate a field. When he saw the Buddha approach, the farmer unwound the turban from his head in order to wash the Buddha's feet. After he removed the turban from his head, it miraculously turned into gold. Amazed, the farmer said to the Buddha, "O, Blessed One, by your kindness please reside here in the north with us."However, it seems the word Hot (ฮอด) meaning "dry, arid" is not normal Thai, as even the most complete online dictionary Longdo does not have an entry on it.
[...]
After the Buddha had given the Lawa the precepts, he spoke to the monks: "Before the Tathagatha came here the Lawa had to use a water wheel to irrigate their fields because this a very dry area (Thai, heang hot). Consequently, this place shall be known as Hot.
องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลปางมะผ้า มีพื้นที่รับผิดชอบ จำนวน 11 หมู่บ้านและ 3 หมู่บ้านบริวาร ได้แก่
หมู่ที่ 1 บ้านแม่ละนา
หมู่ที่ 2 บ้านปางคาม หมู่บ้านบริวารบ้านน้ำจาง
หมู่ที่ 3 บ้านไม้ฮุง หมู่บ้านบริวารบ้านปางคามน้อย
หมู่ที่ 4 บ้านจ่าโบ่
หมู่ที่ 5 บ้านยาป่าแหน หมู่บ้านบริวารบ้านผาเจริญ
หมู่ที่ 6 บ้านผาแดง
หมู่ที่ 7 บ้านไม้ลัน
หมู่ที่ 8 บ้านห้วยเฮี๊ยะ
หมู่ที่ 9 บ้านลุกข้าวหลาม
หมู่ที่ 10 บ้านผาเผือก
หมู่ที่ 11 บ้านบ่อไคร้
News out of the nation's capitol has the island of Koh Samui and Mae Sot in Tak Province as lead contenders for upgrades to Special Administration Zones. Currently in Thailand only Bangkok and Pattaya fall under this sector. One of the key benefits of falling into this category is the ability to elect senior local Government officials rather then appointments that are routinely rotated throughout the various provinces of the country.While there seems to be some confusion caused by the fact that the two cities Pattaya and Bangkok are both called "special administrative areas", the administrative structure is totally different - Pattaya is merely a special kind of municipality, while Bangkok is both a province and a municipality. Since I already knew that a special administrative area modeled after Pattaya was discussed for Mae Sot before, this is probably not about new province-like entities similar to Bangkok.
