Haze response fails public

Desperate, recycled and ineffective. These are just some of the strong rebukes given to the government’s response to the smog caused by ultra-fine PM2.5 dust particles that has been blanketing Bangkok and many provinces over the past month. There’s nothing new in the “12 solutions” that the government has adopted either and they offer the public little hope — largely due to their lack of drastic, multifaceted action.

Equally unpromising is the government’s decision to have Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon lead the National Environmental Board (NEB) task force in dealing with the crisis. Gen Prawit is not really known to have the credentials to handle a problem as complex as this dust crisis.

After a meeting with the NEB on Thursday, the deputy PM assured the public that efforts will be ramped up to tackle the crisis through strict enforcement of the so-called 12 solutions, that aim to detect and prevent emissions from vehicles and industrial sources, to restrict open-air fires and to promote more eco-friendly fuels.

At first look, these “solutions” look promising, but as they say the devil is in the details. These measures have already been adopted by the government over the past few months and have yet to yield any substantial results.

Tackling agricultural fires demands a carrot-andstick approach. So far, the government has been using the wrong stick by imposing a ban and penalties. Yet farmers continue defying these orders because burning sugarcane fields is cost effective.

As for its carrot, instead of taking drastic measures to prohibit businesses from buying sugarcane or corn harvested from burnt fields, the government has increased the quota for each buyer from 20% to 50%.

However, there is a better carrot it could have offered. There have been calls for the state to subsidise expensive crop-cutting machines and support the development of these machines to make the prices lower.

But this advice seems to have fallen on deaf ears. At the same time, this burning of farms is a transboundary, region-wide problem and the government should have convinced its Asean counterparts to put an end to this practice. Again, this is not part of the 12 so-called solutions.

The administration’s aim to ensure compliance with the industrial emission standard will not be fruitful either because, under current regulations, factories are not forced to monitor and report their emissions of PM2.5 particulate matter. They are only asked to report on dust as a whole.

Revising this regulation to make the reporting of PM2.5 emissions mandatory should be one of the government’s priorities, but so far it is only an elephant in the room.

As for the government’s obsession with detecting black smoke from vehicles, it is just a piecemeal effort. In reality, officials should inspect the entire fleet of ageing Bangkok buses and take them off the roads if their exhaust fumes are black and polluting.

Making electric vehicles, both locally made and important ones, cheaper will also entice people to change their cars.

Essentially, the government has largely failed the public, and it is time for it to adopt a broader, more comprehensive approach and pay heed to recommendations from other sectors.

Instead, it is still stuck with desperate measures that have proved to be neither sufficient nor effective during these desperate times.