Airplanes are reflected in flood waters in Bangkok’s domestic Don Muang airport at dawn on November 1, 2011. Nearly 400 people have been killed in months of floods that have disrupted the lives of more than 2 million. Don Muang, used by budget airlines for domestic flights and by private planes, has been closed since Oct. 25.
Anger mounted among victims of Thailand’s catastrophic floods today as water flooded new neighbourhoods as it made its way to sea and the government plotted a recovery aimed at securing the long-term confidence of investors.
The floods began in July and have devastated large parts of the central Chao Phraya river basin, killed nearly 400 people and disrupted the lives of more than 2 million.
Inner Bangkok, protected by a network of dikes and sandbag walls, survived peak tides on the weekend and remains mostly dry.
But large volumes of water are sliding across the land to the north, east and west of the city, diverted by the city centre’s defences into new suburbs as it recedes in others.
In one northeastern city neighbourhood angry residents have been demanding the opening of a sluice gate to let water out of their flooded community.
Residents jostled with police yesterday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered that the gate be opened by one metre (three feet).
But city authorities have warned that the flow through the sluice gate could move via a canal into large parts of the city which are now dry, including an industrial estate.
“We are opposed to it but the government has ordered the BMA to open the gate, so more water will come,” said Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn.
“It could reach the Bang Chan industrial estate. We have to see the consequences,” he told Reuters.
Yingluck’s government and the Bangkok authority represent opposing factions in Thailand’s strife-plagued politics.
The disaster has been the first big test for the government of Yingluck, a political novice who took over this year after an election that many Thais hoped would heal deep divisions.
Saving Bangkok from a ruinous flood would be an important victory. The city’s 12 million people account for 41 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product.
MISERY
But prolonged misery in outlying areas and heavily flooded provinces to the north would take the gloss off that victory, especially given a perception that those areas have been sacrificed to save the centre of the capital.
To the north of Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces have been largely inundated for weeks, along with seven industrial estates that have sprung up over the last two decades on what used to be the central plain’s rice fields.
Yingluck, holding a Cabinet meeting today to work out a recovery plan, said the previous day it should take three months to rehabilitate the estates.
Thailand is the second-largest exporter of computer hard drives and global prices are rising because of a flood-related shortage of major components used in personal computers.
Thailand is also Southeast Asia’s main auto-parts maker and Japan’s Honda Motor Co said car production could be difficult in the second half of its business year ending in March. Its Ayutthaya plant has suspended work indefinitely.
Yingluck said she had assured Japanese investors of steps to prevent a repeat of disaster from the annual rainy season.
The Cabinet is discussing a recovery plan that Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said would cost up to 900 billion baht (RM89.88 billion), including 800 billion baht for an overhaul of the water-management system and 100 billion for the rehabilitation of industrial estates.
The Bank of Thailand has nearly halved its projection of economic growth this year to 2.6 per cent from July’s 4.1 per cent estimate, and said the economy — Southeast Asia’s second largest — would shrink by 1.9 per cent in the December quarter from the previous three months due to the floods.
The floods submerged four million acres (1.6 million ha), an area roughly the size of Kuwait, and destroyed 25 per cent of the main rice crop in the world’s largest rice exporter.
The deluge was caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain falling on a low-lying region, but the weather has been largely clear for a week as the cooler dry season begins.
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