New Karon Municipality offices open

KARON: Karon Municipality dedicated its new 63-million-baht office building yesterday morning with a ceremony presided over by Phuket Governor Niran Kalayanamit.

The new offices, which took about 17 months to complete, are on three rai at Kata Beach, next to the Kata Beach Resort. The stately four-story building replaces two old, single-story wooden buildings at the same site.

Beneath the building is a car park for 40 vehicles and on the top floor is an auditorium with a capacity of about 400 people.

Karon Mayor Tawee Thongcham told Gov Niran that the new facility was intended to better service the needs of residents of the Kata-Karon area, which now has 7,000 hotel rooms.

Remarkably, the municipality had only 5,068 registered households as of February 2007. The official population in the most recent census, conducted in 2005, numbered the official population at 6,484.

Thailand conducts national census surveys every four years.