About 1,200 rai of land has been detached from the Sirinat National Park in Thalang district of Phuket province by unscrupulous officials for use by investors, a member of the National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) member Damrong Phidet said.
Mr Damrong, a former director-general of the National Parks, Wildlife and Plants Conservation Department, said he had obtained this information from officials who took part in a project to prepare a 1:4,000 map to re-define state land under the supervision of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
Mr Damrong said about 1,200 rai of land had been excluded from the Sirinat National Park. The land had then been divided into several hundred small blocks for which Nor Sor 3 Kor land documents had illegally been issued.
The price of these plots of land with illegally issued documents was now about 40 million baht per rai or about 50,000 million baht in total.
"The land had been detached from the national park so investers could build resorts and several well-known hotels, which are now fighting court cases for alleged encroachment of forest reserves," Mr Damrong said.
Mr Damrong said while the government was trying to reclaim encroached forest land for poor people to make a living, a group of government officials had gone in the opposite direction.
He said the officials preparing the map would present re-defined state land boundaries to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
The newly defined map would then be forwarded to a meeting, to chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, for consideration at Government House, he added.