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admin · Site Admin Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 173

Todays' Bangkok Post:

>STORY
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has put on hold the 387-million-baht procurement of buses for the Bangkok Rapid Transit (BRT) project and set up a committee to look into alleged irregularities. The inquiry team, headed by City Clerk Pongsak Semsan, has 15 days to wrap up the investigation and the bus procurement is being put on hold for the time being, said Bangkok deputy governor Vallop Suwandee, who now serves as acting governor.

The BMA will today also clarify the procurement process for the 45 air-conditioned, gas-fuelled BRT buses.

The planned press briefing comes after former city clerk Khunying Nathanon Thavisin asked the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to look into alleged irregularities in the purchase.

Khunying Nathanon suspected price collusion, claiming the price per BRT bus that City Hall agreed to was three million baht above the market price.

The BMA signed a contract in February to buy the 45 BRT buses costing 387 million baht from Thailand's Bestlin Group, which was one million baht lower than the BMA's median price.

The hand-over of the buses was scheduled for August this year prior to a test-run on Aug 12.

BMA spokesman Thanom Onketpol said yesterday that Khunying Nathanon's information about the project was incomplete.

The specifications of the buses the BMA has decided to buy are different from the Euro II buses of the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority and thus the prices are different, he said.

He said the former city clerk misunderstood the terms of reference (ToR) of the project.

He said the ToR require that buses should be equipped with at least 20 seats and that the bus supplier must have experience of procuring 35-seat buses.

Khunying Nathanon, however, claimed that the ToR require buses with 37 seats but the buses planned for delivery have only 34 seats.

The BMA spokesman also thanked the former city clerk for giving the project free publicity and asked her to come to the BMA's press briefing today.

Khunying Nathanon yesterday denied her move was politically motivated, saying she bore no grudges against Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin.

''I would have asked the reporters to come and see me lodge a complaint with the DSI if I had wanted to politicise it,'' she said.

She said she decided to go to the DSI instead of the BMA because it would be better to have a non-partisan agency to conduct an investigation.

>STOP PRESS
Deputy Bangkok governor Wallop Suwandee has announced that a press conference will be held at 10:00am on Wednesday morning to explain Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's purchase of the Bangkok BRT cars.

It is hoped that the conference will allow BMA officials to clarify the acquisition of these vehicles which critics claim had not been transparent.

"To quell rumours that the vehicles were bought at excessive prices, senior BMA officials would like to take this opportunity to give details about this and assure the public that the purchase had been done legally. More importantly, the public should know that the BRT cars are nothing like the average bus. Their safety system, the brakes and the general structure of these cars are much more special, so they shouldn't be compared with the average bus," he said.

The BMA will test-run the BRT buses on Bangkok's roads soon.

joachim · Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 1 Location: Kassel, Germany

Dear thaimelbournetransport Forum,

I'd like to know if there have been some new developments in the BRT system in Bangkok: Are the new buses already operating? Will there be articulated buses? Is there progress regarding the stations?

Thank you for all answers Very Happy

Joachim

railaway · Joined: 01 Feb 2009 Posts: 22

may I answer-no the system is still not finished and the buses-as you can read from this news-not yet ordered. When they will come and when it will all be ready to run-is anybodies guess.

advice12 · Joined: 30 Aug 2009 Posts: 27

This is due to because it is not fully completed yet.

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