For the past two months, vast areas of the upper part of the country have been ravaged by flooding. In fact, from Sept 28 to yesterday, 54 provinces were affected including at least 240,066 households in 71,344 villages of 262 districts.
Needless to say, these villagers have been living in harsh conditions. There are growing complaints about poor management of the flood warning and evacuation systems. This should not happen at all since the government has spent huge sums of its budget on flood rescue efforts and evacuations.
The Think Forward Center, a think-tank of the Move Forward Party, brought these issues to light, based on its latest monitoring of the situation. One glaring example is the evacuation efforts in flood-hit communities in Warin Chamrap district of Ubon Ratchathani province.
The area has been hit by floods for over a month, and this week the water in the Mun River reportedly rose to its highest level in four decades.
As such, villagers are clearly concerned about the lack of evacuation sites or facilities therein. Some lack toilets and necessary supplies. Flood-hit communities in Ayutthaya and Chai Nat have also complained about this.
Another problem is the flood warning system. While the government has enough data, the problem lies in not getting messages across well. Experts have even criticised the government for being responsible for the communication breakdown.
As a result, villagers like those in Ubon Ratchathani are struggling to fathom what to expect due to all the technical jargon being bandied about, leaving them poorly placed to prepare for emergencies.
In this respect, the government and local administrations should learn a lesson from the experience of Chiang Mai Municipality last week.
For years, the local administration and municipality have cooperated with the flood and pollution monitoring centre at Chiang Mai University, as well as state agencies such as the Irrigation Department and the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, to develop messages warning villagers up to eight hours before floods are due to strike.
The messages are simple and concise, informing them when the flooding is due and how much water is expected. This has given them ample time to prepare.
It is expected that water from reservoirs in the northern region will rush down and wreak havoc in areas along the Chao Phraya River, including Bangkok, this month. Hopefully, the government and other local authorities will learn from these complaints and follow up with some proper measures.
After the floods dry up, people hope the government and policymakers will start to resolve all of these flood-related problems at the fundamental level, instead of relying on flood walls, sandbags, water pumps and irrigational channels in a seemingly never-ending effort to keep the flood water contained in reservoirs.
The floods witnessed in other parts of the country since the Chiang Mai episode last week, such as in Ubon Ratchathani along the Mun River and in Bangkok, are the result of poor land use.
Along the banks of Chiang Mai's Ping River and Ubon Ratchathani's Mun River, much of the land has been encroached upon or developed. In Bangkok, green areas in both the eastern and western parts of the city are being developed. Unless these problems related to the use of land are resolved, we can only expect the flooding to get worse.
Which means more sandbags, water pumps and flood walls.
