TAK: Security officers on Sunday intercepted the smuggling of solar panels and fuel to Myanmar in separate incidents in this border western province.
The Thai government has cut off the power supply and suspended fuel exports to three border towns in Myanmar at the request of Chinese authorities to protect Chinese citizens from Myanmar-based scam gangs.
In the first incident, a combined team of soldiers, border patrol police and administrative officials were patrolling a forestry area on the Thai-Myanmar border in tambon Mae Tao of Mae Sot district when they spotted two men carrying suspicious items.
The officers identified themselves and asked for a search but the men dumped the items and fled on a boat across the Moei river to the Myanmar side.
“The men left five boxes of solar panels on the spot. They are likely to be destined to the Myanmar side given the ongoing power shortage after the cutting of power supplies,” said Col Natthakorn Ruantip, commander of the Ratchamanu Task Force which led the patrol.
In the adjacent district of Mae Ramat, soldiers and police arrested a 31-year-old man identified only as Jor after they stopped his pickup truck for a search at a checkpoint and found 10 18-litre containers containing 26 litres of petrol worth 930 baht and 114 litres of diesel worth 3,870 baht inside the vehicle.
Mr Jor reportedly confessed to buying the fuel from local petrol stations. He was about to bring the containers to a pier by the Moei river and sell them to a buyer who would transport them to the Myanmar side.
