Change of plan delays completion of park

PHUKET CITY: Because of a change of plan, part of a 40-million-baht park being built in honour of HM Queen Sirikit remains a muddy wasteland five months after the main part was finished.

Under the original plans, six rai of the 10-rai site, on the south side of Dibuk Rd, was earmarked for the Queen’s Park; three rai was set aside for a new provincial treasury building, and a new office for the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) would have occupied the remaining one rai.

However, Governor Udomsak Uswarangkura felt it would be better for the city if the three rai reserved for the treasury offices were left open and landscaped, rather than built upon.

Now the Governor has asked the central government to approve his request for funding to landscape the remaining three rai and to build the treasury offices elsewhere.

Phuket Municipality received 40 million baht to create the park. The most noticeable structure, a two-deck 200-space carpark with an open-air arena for events, was completed in January. The new TAT office is still under construction.

But three rai is still given over mainly to mud, weeds and builders’ debris, while the government considers the governor’s request for funding.

Some interim remedial action should be underway soon, however. Contacted by the Gazette, Phuket Vice-Mayor Kawee Tansukatanon said the Municipality wrote to the construction company on June 6 to ask it to tidy up the land temporarily until its long-term future has been decided definitively.

He said, “We have written to the construction company and asked them to clean up the flooded land and plant grass there within 15 days.”