Thai Water Projects Poorly Managed

The Thai government's water resource development has been so badly managed and poorly coordinated that new irrigation projects were sometimes built upstream, depriving existing downstream projects and resulting in shortage and empty storage capacity, an Agriculture Ministry report says.

An assessment of the needs of the Agriculture Ministry's agriculture sector obtained by the Penguin Star offers an explanation for such blunders and other instances of gross mismanagement that are bound to happen when some 40 government agencies muddle through water-resource development projects uncoordinated. Water resources management in Thailand is virtually non-existent as lucrative and corrupt political considerations and project-construction driven development usually takes precedence over appropriate management of dwindling resources.

"Projects are formulated mainly based on solving specific problems and confined to specific areas," the report says, "More often than not with some inappropriate pre-conceived mandate that has more to do with some politician's or wealthy businessman's or venal official's vested interest than actual development of a rational solution to a water resources management problem."

The report says a typical example is the Chao Phraya basin development scheme, Thailand's first and most important, in which irrigation projects were initially developed in the lower Chao Phraya to use all the excess runoff from the four tributaries to provide irrigation water to six million rai ( one rai = 1,600 m²)in the lower central plains.

However demand for irrigation development compelled the Irrigation Department to build more irrigation projects upstream in the tributaries which resulted in a dramatic drop in storage at the big dams and other irrigation projects further downstream in the lower Chao Phraya.

The report says huge sums of taxpayers' money can be saved if only planning and implementation of projects would take a broader view and take into consideration other projects that already exist and are planned and designed more with the needs and aspirations of end users, sustainable development of the nation's water resources, and more appropriate and efficient use of the water. The government spends 40 billion to 50 billion Baht (US$ = 39 Baht) every year on water resource management. Most of this still seems to result in poor management of this dwindling resource.

As the demand for water increases due to population growth, as well as expansion of industrial and service sectors, all agencies involved in water resource development are preparing plans to construct more projects. However, these projects are planned and implemented without a consultative process involving end-users and other parties who have their own vested interests in the development of water resources.

"Each department prepares its own plan and program without any coherence or direction," the report says. Worse still, the report adds, the programs of most agencies remain the same with little changes and each year only increments are made to the previous year's budget, meaning there is little transparency in the process and that there is little understanding of proper water resource management.

A report in early 1999 on the Improvement of Efficiency in Water-Resource Management commissioned by the Office of the Civil Service Commission also pointed to the same inefficiencies and shortcomings.

The report tells of the strange way government agencies involved in water resource development demarcate their turfs. For instance, the division of labour among departments involved in constructing wells to provide potable water for villages is based on the size of the tubes installed in wells being constructed, supposedly because they are expressly specialised and equipped to do the particular job.

The report's author, Dr Pathan Suwanmongkol of Sukhothai Thammathirat University, said: "No one really knows how much waste is caused by duplication of work such as when government agencies end up accumulating the same type of manpower, costly machinery and equipment which could have been shared."

The report concludes that the Thai government must immediately formulate a program to streamline the water resources management process in the country and that a serious attempt needs to be made to strengthen the institution(s) that would be responsible for water resources management and development. This would require increasing capacity, and improving water resources planning and development of infrastructure and policies. Because of the current political and entrenched culture associated with water resources management, any real change must come from without the country and with new and fresh approaches.

"Thailand's agencies must solicit assistance from international water resources management and engineering consultant firms that have the necessary experience of dealing with strengthening institutional water resources management capacity in a tropical, rice-based agricultural system, and which have an intimate understanding of the Thai culture, its people, language, agricultural systems, water resources, and rural traditions to become effective."