Senator Poldej Pinprateep on Monday accused a special task force appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of abusing its authority by extorting money from a number of rubber growers and traders.
The Phaya Nakkharat task force recently seized around 600 tonnes of rubber, worth 15 million baht, from a villager in Sangkhla Buri district of Kanchanaburi province for a month until the product decayed, said the senator during the Senate's general debate against the government on Monday.
The confiscation was conducted over a claim that the origin of 29 tonnes out of the 600 tonnes was doubted, and the rubber wasn't returned to its owner even after the villager had explained clearly where the 29 tonnes were from, said Dr Poldej, citing a complaint from the villager.
Another complaint was submitted to him by a rubber grower in Ao Luk district of the southern province of Krabi, who reportedly faced a false allegation lodged with the ministry by a highly influential group that claimed he had smuggled rubber in from a neighbouring country, said Dr Poldej.
The rubber grower said that the task force did not help him but applied pressure on him to give them some of his rubber so as to avoid all of it being seized, he said.
Dr Poldej said he also heard that the task force sent out officers in about 30 cars every day to set up checkpoints to extort money from lorries transporting rubber between Thailand and neighbouring countries.
Before January, the bribe rate demanded was 1,000 baht, while in the following months, the rate was raised to 5,000 baht, Dr Poldej claimed.
In response to the senator's accusation, Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Thammanat Prompow insisted the ministry's task force has been working ethically in its fight against rubber smuggling.
The stricter inspection of the transport of rubber between Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar through Kanchanaburi's Sangkhla Buri has followed complaints received from locals about the foul smell of rubber piled up awaiting transport, said Capt Thammanat.
Also, the ministry has received a report about a number of rubber traders who were behind the smuggling of rubber grown in a neighbouring country where the labour costs are cheaper into Thailand before shipping the smuggled product on to Malaysia, he said.