I was asked by Kamphaengphet City Mayor (Mr. Chaiwat Suphaathaphanich) to present in front of the sub-committee of City Planning which was under the City Planning Department, Interior Ministry on the matter of Kamphaengphet City Planning reusing. The disagreement on land using and the exiting facts in the city.
According to the law, a city planning making by the Local Government must be approved by sub-committee of the City Planning and pass to the consideration of the City Planning Commintee at the ministerial level. What happening here was preparing and making city planing has transferred to local government's job. The problem was no one know how to make it even though traning courses provided by the City Planning Department. Some provice, for instance, Kamphaenphet province where the Kamphaengphet Municipaliy was located had not yet completely transfer this job to the municipality. As a result, the Provincial City Planning Office still made mapping the city planning while the municipality did support the process of public hearing before using the city planning. This means Local government did not shaded the color on the city map. However, the municipality followed what the Provincial City Planning Office man said. Once, he shaded the red color(commerical zone) on the previous light green zone (recreation zone)as that area became public market known " Night Bazzar" where most citizens used in the evening for eating out and night shopping. So, there was a little red dot on over the light green zone. Regard to this, the sub-committee on city planning which the majority were central government's high ranking officials, didn't like to see. And they all thrown a heavy attack to the Kamphaengphet City Planning. They wanted to preserved the green zone as long as it could be (some academic called "sustainability")
What's wrong about the city planning? Why a market built in green zone? "This is a big mistake" someone made commended on the draft of city planning. I have been trying to tell them the truth that a previous city mayor decided to build the market on green zone once when the city planning was invalid several years ago. On the matter of fact, the market has been exiting to serve local people and respond to the expansion of local market and economy regarding to tourism. I also claimed them back to the past when the Governor retrived a thousand heaps of sand from the river and dumped it back to the river shore to be determined as green zone land. If the local government should be blamed on buiding the market on the green zone, why don't the governor could be blamed on transforming of river to land? What the Governor done could bring negative impacts to river, fishes, and living things nearby the river which is a bigger impacts to locality than building market where local people used everyday.
I didn't mean to blame the Governor to do such thing. But why most of governmental officials from central government always blamed others, especially the local government? We did our job. Our jobs are to serve local needs. Why should it be wrong when we serve people demand? Actually, the law allowed to change color zone if the exiting area has been changed. In case of Kamphaengphet city, only a small piece of green zone became markets at night and local government considered that this area should change its color to red zone which means "commercial zone" due to physical changing. What's the matter when local government wanted to change color zone in order to suit with physical changing and to serve people demand?
