OPINION

Enough burning

Re: "Waste plants cause stink", (BP, April 2).

If our Pollution Control Department (PCD) actually insists "waste-to-energy projects are crucial for addressing Thailand's chronic waste problem", then with this misguided mindset it is hardly surprising Chiang Mai's hospitals are filling up with people suffering from serious respiratory ailments.

In the world of waste management nearly everybody understands that burning waste is the least desirable of all possible options. It should be reserved for waste impossible to recycle or reuse or dispose of by any other means. But the PCD, in cahoots with the Ministry of Interior's Local Administration Department, is peppering the country with these long-term environmental disasters. Some 25 are already in operation and the goal is 79 nationwide.

Given the government's deification of the bio-circular green economic model, it's a little surprising the people at the PCD haven't got the message. The three RRRs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)? The circular economy?

If the PCD wants to really get to grips with our waste management crisis, it should take the first step toward making Thailand a recycling heaven; that would be mandatory recycling of all waste at source. It's that simple. Of course, that would obviate the need for all those Energy Regulatory Commission licences to build power plants, and the power purchasing agreements, those delightful licences to print money.

Missing plaque

It was surprising to realise this week marks the seventh anniversary of the plaque commemorating the 1932 Siamese revolution inexplicably going missing.

Whilst optimists, like myself, await its return others seem to have given up -- as they were advised. At the time junta leader Gen Prayut asked: "Wouldn't it be better to look ahead at the future?" He added "old subjects are just history".

Since the plaque's disappearance I can think of a couple of other notable occasions when Thais have been required to "turn a blind eye". One wonders for how much longer their collective amnesia can be relied upon?

Censor whinge

Re: "Big 'no' to censors", (PostBag, April 8) & "Beware of boredom", (PostBag, March 30).

It seems PostBag's editor is often allocated an increase in column inches at the weekend, and this is where the serial letter-writing trio of Bahrt, Setter and Jellison come in useful in padding out the letters page. On Saturday April 8, we had all three.

That's fine by me. However, I do take issue however with Eric Bahrt's standard whinge about being censored, in which he wilfully misrepresents my contribution to the vaccine debate.

Prove me wrong, Mr Bahrt, but I doubt I would ever have described Covid vaccines with the vapid adjective "wonderful", and I certainly have never claimed any expert knowledge of virology. If he considers it "lies" that my layman's observation on the evolution of the pandemic showed that vaccines worked and have been instrumental in putting Covid 19 behind us as an existential threat, so be it. Does Khun Eric have a single positive thought about anything?

Conscription critic

Re: "Be kind to soldiers", (InQuote, April 13) and "More men voluntarily enlist", (BP, April 12).

PM Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, responding to calls for ending military conscription, said, "Be kind to soldiers. About 40,000 border soldiers work non-stop to protect the country. How can the country exist peacefully without them?"

Prayut unwittingly acknowledges the abject failure of our military conscription. Believing that we must be compelled to defend King and country, we compel conscripts to serve, subject them to inhumane/humiliating treatment and, in one case this month, authorities forced a conscript to come in person to the recruitment station to prove that he was truly bedridden.

Our military recruitment process reminds us of the British navy's press gangs, well-known for the physical force they used during the 17th and 18 centuries to man their ships. But this practice fell into disuse after 1815 -- and has no place in Thailand in the 21st century.

The best defenders are those who are eager to protect their homeland -- and have not been forced to do so. We have such persons in abundance. Maj Gen Sirichan Ngathong, the Thai army's deputy spokesman, says that just nine days into this year's annual conscription period, over 23,000 men have voluntarily enlisted, and army chief Narongpan Jittkaewtae said the total could exceed last year's 29,997.

What we need to do is to make training more job-relevant, and non-humiliating, with pay equivalent to that of the private sector. Make the military gender-free, so that we can offer our citizens, regardless of gender, the opportunity to defend our country -- like US Senator Ladda Tammy Duckworth has done so splendidly for the US.