Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Mae Sot upgraded to a city

Yesterday the first transcript of a 2010 meeting of the board to consider draft laws (คณะกรรมการพิจารณาร่างกฎหมาย) was uploaded, directly with an important municipal change.

Already effective January 28, the town Mae Sot (เทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด) at the border to Myanmar has been upgraded to a city municipality (thesaban nakhon, เทศบาลนครแม่สอด). The reason why the upgrade was done so quickly is the fact that on January 28 2010 the term of the municipal council ended and an election of the council is necessary within 60 days after the end of term. The end of the council term is the easiest opportunity to change the municipal status, as no shortening of an electoral term is necessary.

What make me a bit wonder about this upgrade is that actually it was planned to upgrade Mae Sot to a special administrative area (องค์กรปกครองท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ), probably modeled after Pattaya, incorporating some of the neighboring municipalities and TAO into one metropolis. I don't know whether the upgrade to a city means that the plans for the special administrative area have been shelved already, or just are expected to take too long to deny the town the larger responsibilities and opportunities which come with the higher municipal status any longer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The given URL of www.msmun.go.th doesn't exist (any more?), do you have a valid address?

Greez
hdamm

Andy said...

It should be the correct URL, looking at the latest cached pages in Google it was still working on January 20. Since that cached page contains an email contact I tried my luck and send an email, yet probably it will be ignored as almost all email contact attempts to Thai authorities.

There is a second page, hosted by the National Municipal League, but not sure if that one is maintained like their main website.

Brian said...

It's the correct URL but the domain registration expired on 20 Dec 2009. I wonder if this was deliberate or they forgot to renew the domain. Some Thai departments and especially schools run websites without domain names (access by IP address only) so there's a chance albeit small that you may be still able to access the website. Next problem... IP address anyone?

-----------

http://whois.domaintools.com/msmun.go.th

Domain: MSMUN.GO.TH
ACE: MSMUN.GO.TH
Registrar: T.H.NIC Co., Ltd.
Name Server: NS.THAIMAXHOST.COM
Status: REGISTRY-HOLD
Updated Date: 18 Feb 2009
Created Date: 21 Dec 2006
Renew Date: 21 Dec 2008
Exp Date: 20 Dec 2009
Registrant: Mae Sot Town Municipality (เทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด)
99/99 Asia Road, Mae Sot District, Tak Province
93110
TH

Tech Contact: 10379
G.N.A Solution Co., Ltd.
122/1 Moo. 6, T. Hupai, A. Maharach
Ayutthaya
13150
TH

Andy said...

Same problem as usual, most of the local government websites disappear because they don't renew the domain registration, and then start again at a new domain name. Anyone remember the protecttheking disaster? At least with a .go.th domain no domain grabber will steal the domain before someone responsible wakes up.