No guiding vision

Re: “PM mulls personal car ban”, (BP, Jan 22).

I suggest that our cabinet, including PM Prayut, badly needs vision, or “the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom” (Oxford Dictionary). Our government focuses on knee-jerk end results — not root causes, which require analysis and vision. Look at the fight against air pollution, for example. We’ve had the same pollution for decades — including when PM Prayut headed the junta dictatorship. If, as Natural Resources and Environment Minister Varawut Silpa-archa claims, 72% of the PM2.5 dust particles come from traffic emissions, and half of the vehicles tested violated emission standards, why didn’t PM Prayut upgrade and enforce emission standards when he grabbed power seven years ago — and why doesn’t he do so now?

If electric vehicles are the way to go, why hasn’t Gen Prayut replaced dieselpowered public buses with electric ones, heavily promoted the infrastructure needed to support electric vehicles, and subsidised EVs, including hybrids?

If we might have to permit only public transport during high levels of pollution, why hasn’t he subsidised all mass-transit systems so the public can really rely on them for fast, safe, cheap transportation that permeates everywhere, with urban residents no more than 10 minutes away by foot from public transport — as in, say, Tokyo? PM Prayut, would you kindly order your cabinet to use only public transport, say, every Monday for 2020, and see how unprepared we are for your “solution”?

PM Prayut, show some vision, please.

BURIN KANTABUTRA