Key area ‘not in buffer zone’
National Park Office director Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn has said that a 3,000rai disputed area of Khao Yai National Park is not inside a buffer zone because the land is on the boundary of the national park.
Mr Chaiwat was responding yesterday to information from the Royal Thai Survey Department (RTSD), which has finished surveying the disputed land which the Agricultural Land Reform Office had earmarked for Sor Por Por 4-01 documents for landless farmers.
The RTSD found the land was not within the park but was in the so-called buffer zone. Mr Chaiwat disagreed with the RTSD. He said the boundary of Khao Yai National Park had been clearly announced by a former royal decree.
“I insist the disputed land is not inside the buffer zone. We have a royal decree to support it. This is the evidence we have used to defend our national parkland in court in the past 30 years,” he said. “Based on Section 18 of the National Park Act, a forest buffer zone is marked 3 kilometres from the boundary of a national park or a conserved forest. The buffer zone is not an area of a reclaimed forest that the government can decide if should be preserved or allocated to farmers.”
Mr Chaiwat said the Alro needs to understand the correct meaning of a buffer zone as well as a protected forest boundary and a community forest before allocating any land for farmers.
He said the One Map project, a single map developed by the RTSD, has not yet been completed. This will have a detailed scale ratio of 1:4,000 and will be a reference for all government agencies as they hope to reduce conflicts caused by the use of different map scales.
Mr Chaiwat said those who informed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Tuesday that the disputed area in Khao Yai was not inside the park were members of the committee of the One Map project.
Mr Chaiwat was invited by two House committees yesterday to provide explanations about the land dispute in Khao Yai. One is the Committee on National Security, Border Affairs, National Strategy, and National Reform; the other is the Committee on Land, Natural Resources and Environment.
After meeting some of the people who had previously received Sor Por
Kor 4-01 documents in Khao Yai, he said they were not poor farmers but capitalists, politicians and investors.
Mr Chaiwat then sent invitation letters to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), the secretarygeneral of the Alro as well as the governor of Nakhon Ratchasima to survey the disputed land tomorrow.
Meanwhile, political activist Sonthiya Sawatdee filed a lawsuit with the Central Administrative Court yesterday, asking it to suspend issuing Sor Por Kor 4-01 certificates covering 1.6 million rai of land nationwide until the overlapping land problems between the Alro and 142 national parks have been resolved.