With thousands of tourists heading out to islands around Phuket and Phang Nga Bay every day, all with their lunches and snacks packed up in plastic bags and polystyrene, you can imagine how much waste is produced. So Thais online have been full of praise for tourists using traditional “pinto thao” food containers instead of plastic bags to take their picnic meals into Krabi’s Than Bok Khorani Marine National Park. Park officials were at the same time handing out cloth bags to visitors, in response to a Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment ban on plastic bags and foam containers at all 154 national parks.
PHUKET: The Similan Islands National Park authority has warned tour operators over a group of people posing as park officers and offering reduced entry fees to the islands. “A couple of weeks ago, a number of tour operators informed me that there was a group of people who approached them, claiming to be national park officers,” Similan Islands National Park acting chief Nat Kongkaesorn told the Phuket Gazette today. “They said the tour operator could pay a reduced entrance fee based on the size of the boat engine instead of the number tourists on the vessel.
PHUKET: The Phuket Employment Office yesterday launched a two-day series of seminars to educate Russians, Chinese and Koreans operating tourism-related businesses in Phuket about work permits and employment law regarding foreigners. Phuket Governor Maitri Inthusut officiated the opening of the first seminar yesterday, attended by 100 foreign and Thai representatives working for tour operators that cater to Russians tourists. Talks were delivered in Thai and related to attendees by translators.
PHUKET: The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) was forced to start taking steps to redress the growing concerns voiced in Phuket about the environmental destruction of Koh Racha Yai by negligent tour operators and tourism business owners. The news comes after a leading figure in local environmental conservation blasted greedy tourism operators and the lax enforcement of environmental protection laws at a meeting in Rawai yesterday. “To save the environment we need action now… It’s time to use the rules to enforce [environmental protection] and we need to make private businesses understand [their responsibilities],” said Suta Prateep Na Thalang.