‘You could see and smell the daily flow of trash’: how Bangkok is struggling to protect its slums from flooding
Authorities have struggled to convince most occupants to relocate
Rung, 63, fought a running battle against the rubbish and raw sewage besieging her old home in a wooden slum perched on stilts on the banks of Bangkok’s Lat Phrao canal.
“You could see and smell the daily flow of trash,” recalled the tailor who goes by one name. “It would stop at the back of my house. I wanted a better life for my son and daughter.”
On Christmas Day last year, Rung moved into a brand new, blue-painted house just metres from her old one in the Chao Phor Somboon community – part of the Thai capital’s attempts to clear a waterway of illegal settlements that contributed to catastrophic floods in 2011.
Rung, who now pays just US$2 (HK$15) per month towards the US$6,000 construction cost of her new two-room home, is one of the successes of a project along the Lat Phrao canal launched almost two years ago, which is so far only about a third complete.
The authorities have struggled to convince most slum dwellers to relocate, and are unlikely to meet the project deadline of June 2019, according to a senior official.
Delays to the canal rehabilitation, and the slow progress or abandonment of a flurry of other flood-prevention schemes announced after 2011 could result in a bigger flood disaster in the decades ahead unless urgent action is taken, experts warn.