Tsunami southern Thailand      

After the tsunami for the most part, tourists have returned to the beaches and resorts on the Patong Beach side of the island, on the Andaman Sea coast, and new or rebuild resorts are there to accommodate them – and to provide essential work opportunities for Thais in the tourist industry. No appreciable drop in tourist numbers has been reported in this critical region.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all of the parts of Thailand's Andaman coast struck by the tsunami. Reconstruction has been slower and more fraught with controversy in Khao Lak to the north, Phi Phi Island farther north, and coastal Krabi across from Phi Phi. Longtime visitors to many of those locations have, in various ways, tried to prevent the original owners of tourist properties there from losing their land and licenses. Not all of the efforts have been successful, and lawsuits regarding lands are choking Thailand's cumbersome court system.

Even so, the dramatic recovery of Phuket after the tsunami has become a beacon of hope for similar places on both sides of the Andaman and Indian Oceans, for whom recovery has been slower and fraught with even greater troubles. Author Poyel enjoys life as an Internet financed permanent traveler with Thailand as a base.

388 tsunami victims still unidentified

Published: 23-12-2009 by Bangkok Post

The bodies of nearly 400 victims of the 2004 tsunami remain unidentified in Phangnga after the unit charged with identifying the dead was disbanded.

The task of identifying the dead after the tsunami was given to the Royal Thai Police Office. Ad hoc identification centers were quickly formed in Phuket and Phangnga after the tsunami. Later, a permanent body identification centre, the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification unit (TTVI), was set up at the Bang Maruan cemetery in Phangnga's Takua Pa district.

Phangnga was chosen because it recorded the highest tsunami death toll. Police received 3,696 bodies for identification on Feb 6, 2005. It has released 3,308 bodies, but 388 remain unidentified at a cemetery near the tsunami memorial sculpture.
No identifications have been made this year, a source said.

Some officers whose job was to identify the tsunami victims have been accused of embezzling foreign donations intended to assist with identification work. An investigation has been instigated but no action has been taken against anyone. The TTVI had received grants from 13 foreign countries including European nations, Japan and the US. A grant from the US amounted to more than 11 million baht and was spent on body identification equipment. Police in charge of the identification centre have been transferred from the facility.

More than 20 employees of the tsunami id center resigned when they were not paid. They filed a suit with the Labour Court in March this year to demand their salaries. A month after filing the court action, the unit agreed to pay them, but the employees filed another suit to demand 20 million baht in compensation. The identification unit also has unpaid utilities and DNA test bills amounting to hundreds of thousands of baht. Information about the distinctive features of identified bodies was supposed to have been stored in the unit's computers for easy retrieval in case relatives turn up to look for their loved ones.

The tsunami identification facility has been spruced up ahead of the fifth anniversary of the tsunami on Saturday although the effectiveness of its function has been called into question. The 2004 tsunami hit six provinces on the Andaman coast on Dec 26, 2004, leaving 5,395 people dead and 8,457 others injured. A total of 2,940 people were reported missing.