Move Forward slams govt over inadequate budget to fight PM2.5 air pollution

Move Forward’s Chiang Mai MP Phattarapong Leelaphat said on the second day of the budget bill debate that the government of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin had made tackling PM2.5 issue a national agenda but the budget allocation was “disappointing”.

He said the Public Health Ministry had proposed too little budget for treating respiratory diseases caused by PM2.5.

He said the ministry had sought a budget of 298.3 million baht for handling the pollution and environment, but up to 292 million baht would be used to upgrade the green and clean standard of public hospitals, and were not related to PM2.5.

He said the Health Department would spend the remaining 6.2 million for implementing measures to reduce the number of patients with respiratory disease by 5%.

Phattarapong said he could not see the Public Health Ministry allocate a budget to buy PM2.5 prevention gears for health officials and volunteers who would have to risk their health visiting and helping respiratory patients in PM2.5 risk zones.

Worse still, the Move Forward MP said the government has not allocated any budget for public schools to install air-filtering systems to allow students to breathe clean air.

Phattarapong said the allocation for the Agriculture Ministry to reduce the burning of farm byproducts to reduce PM2.5 was also disappointing.

He said the government had announced that it would provide incentives for farmers in the North to stop burning farm residues and byproducts by 50% but the budget for the purpose was only 10%. Even worse, he said the ministry’s budget for fighting PM2.5 was slashed from 1.26 million in the previous year to 1.18 million baht.

He added that the budget for fighting forest fires also lacked details on how the budget would be spent although the authorities had learned the patterns behind the forest fires in the nine upper northern provinces.

He said the budget for buying drones and other gears for forest fire-fighters was not clear and the seeking of 80.8 million baht for setting up monitoring systems at 1,000 spots in national parks also lacked details as to whether the authorities would set up monitoring posts or install fire sensors.

Most of fire-fighting budgets were concentrated at the head offices of agencies concerned instead of decentralising to local administrations, he said.

He added that the government had allocated a budget for buying PM2.5 monitoring devices only for Songkhla, Chiang Mai and Bangkok. Worse still, the government lacked an effective system to warn the public on the PM2.5 situation, he said.

Phattarapong said the government sought a budget of 797.5 million baht for implementing measures to reduce risks from climate change but the government didn’t provide details on how it would be spent.

He said he was not sure whether this allocation was related to the Clear Sky Strategy under which the government would negotiate with neighbouring countries to reduce slash and farm-burning to prevent forest fires in their countries.

No details on the negotiations had been made public, he added.

The second day of the debate began on Thursday morning with not many MPs present. Prime Minister Srettha did not attend the debate in the morning.

The meeting started with Deputy House Speaker Pichet Chuamuangphan informing the opposition and coalition that the government had spent 7 hours and 52 minutes of debate time while the opposition had used six hours and 43 minutes on the first day.

Pichet said the coalition has 12 hours and seven minutes left while the opposition has 14 hours and 57 minutes left for the debate.

After Pichet told the House to resume the debate, Democrat party-list MP Surathin Pichart called on the House to slash the budget of 5.112 billion for the Internal Security Operations Command.

Before Phattarapong attacked the measly budget allocation to tackle PM2.5, Move Forward party-list MP Nitipol Phiewmoh had said that the Srettha government had allocated too little budget for dealing with climate change although it has become a global concern.

Nitipol said the allocations of the Srettha government were similar to those of the previous government. For example, it had allocated a budget for the Meteorological Department to buy equipment for measuring airspeeds at airports and for buying expensive flight navigation tools that had nothing to do with carbon emission reduction.

Nitipol said the new Department Of Climate Change and Environment under the Srettha government also had set too low a target for reduction of greenhouse gases at 4% a year, while Thailand was already reducing gas emissions by 15% a year.

Nitipol also proposed that the government increase the budget to pay salaries of forest protection rangers instead of cutting their budget. He said the rangers were being paid only 9,000 to 10,000 baht a month.