Phuket 6 th January 2005

PDG Noraseth (Rotary Zone Director) and DG Voravut (District 3330) visits together with ADG Zone 6 and 7, EPDG Sermsak and 6 Presidents of the Phuket Rotary Clubs the Vice Governor of Phuket K. Vinai.

The Vice Governor was introduced to the Rotarians attending the meeting but knew many of them from his previous visits to the Clubs. Rotary Zone Director Noraseth introduced the idea that Rotary would like to sponsor the building of 100 new homes under the Government policy, best to be a little village which could be called Rotary Village and gives many opportunities for further help and support as scholarship, vocational training, clean water treatment projects or if it would not be possible that Rotary would be interested to re-build a destroyed school, for example the School in Kamala sub-district, Phuket.

The Vice-governor Vinai explained that many private organization already pledged funds for the rebuilding of homes and that a total of 3,000 homes had been destroyed and more then 2,500 homes damaged.

The Government policy to re-build homes has set already the style of home, which can be amended, which is 2 floors with upstairs 2 bedrooms and downstairs open. The maximum budget for building the homes is Baht 100,000 per house.

On Phuket two areas had been identified for building homes, which one is in Kamala sub-district and another in Kho Sirae. The problem though is that maybe some of the villagers don't want to move to a new area. Most of the houses destroyed in Kamala are squatters build their homes on public land. The Government will have a separate meeting to decide about the rebuilding at the new sides.

In Kamala sub-district 279 homes had been destroyed and 176 damaged.

IN case Rotary would want to re-build a school the education department and the local administration office would have to be contacted which ADG Orachorn and PDG Sermsak agreed to do.

It was agreed that during the time of re-building the economy and many villagers been loosing their jobs, education to further enhance the profession of the people would be necessary, as most don't want to change profession but could receive further education, which would be possible to even compensated the people for the time used for education.

The Vice Governor also explained the Phuket has a total of 20 orphans, some of only lost mother or father, some both.

Currently the Government is helping to re-build destroyed homes without looking if the land the homes are erected upon is government land and they are squatters or not, just to at first help them to have a place to stay.