Politics of public hearing : a case of conflict resolution of industrial waste management project at Tambon Tasit, Pluag Daeng District, Rayong Province
Abstract:
The conflict over the Industrial Waste Management Project is based on the problem of disagreement on the project location. The projects supporters wanted the project site to be located in Pluag Daeng District while the opponents disagreed. Public hearing was then used to resolve the conflict but only after it being escalated. The purpose of this thesis is to find out whether public hearing can resolve such conflict. The results show that public hearing did not successfully resolve the conflict. There are two reasons. First, both the projects supporters and the opponents implicity had no intention to use public hearing to solve the conflict. Second, public hearing was not properly carried out accordingly to its basic principles. The lack of intention to use public hearing to resolve the conflict was attributed to the problem of low public participation and vested interests. Regarding to low level of public participation, the projects supporters did not give opportunities to the people of Pluag Daeng to really take part in the decision on the project site. The consultation was confined only local officials such as the Sub-district Council (the Tambon Adminstrative Organization). The Kamnan (the head of the sub-district), the Pooyaiban (the head of the village) and the Provincial Council of Rayong (the Rayong Provincial Adminstrative Organization). Moreover, the projects public relations was applied rather late, and the information distributed was insufficient. Regarding to the vested interest, the issue of land speculation of the project site was much prevailing. Finally, the uncompromising standpoint of both sides led to an unprincipled and misuse of the public hearing principles such as no conflict of interest, hearing before decision and hearing every groups were not followed.