Half of Phuket’s population still unregistered

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Niran Kalayanamit’s campaign to encourage people to register themselves as citizens of the island resulted in some success this month, with Phuket’s official population increasing by 1,231 to 324,891 people between July 21 and August 20.

Launched last year, the campaign seeks to increase the number of Thai citizens whose names appear on household registration forms.

Muang District saw the biggest leap in population with a net increase of 811 registrations, including 109 births against just 43 deaths. Net increases were also recorded in Thalang (268) and Kathu (152) over the reporting period.

Gov Niran recently told the Gazette that updated statistics revealing that the number of unregistered residents living in Phuket is around 323,600, indicating about half the Thai citizens living in Phuket are registered in other provinces.

The province will soon launch a “mobile registration unit” that will go around the island registering residents who have not done so already, he said.

Other policies include encouraging government officials from other provinces who are permanently working here to register themselves as Phuket residents and seeking cooperation from schools in Phuket to ask students who are unregistered to enroll under their university’s central student register.

Hotels and business operators all around Phuket will also be asked to encourage their employees to register, he added.

For years, Phuket has faced insufficient budgeting from the central government to provide needed infrastructure to to keep up with the rapid pace development.

This has been due in part to political considerations – Phuket remained staunchly Democrat during the Thai Rak Thai administration – but also in large part because central government budgets to provinces are largely alloted based on registered population.