A year after Bill Gates’ holiday snaps those cables are still hanging!

Thai Rath went to investigate what had happened in the year since Bill Gates embarrassed the country with his observations about Thailand’s infamous hanging wires.

And they found not much has changed. They quoted an electrical official as saying “it’s not pretty but it’s cheap”.

The news media reported that in June last year Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha had been spurred into action by the Microsoft founder who posted pictures on Facebook after his travels to the kingdom.

Prayut ordered the speeding up of projects to bury the cables and restore a semblance of order and beauty to the streets.

But when Thai rath went to the Pracha Uthit area of Huay Kwang and surrounding areas of Suthisan yesterday they saw the same old problems.

Nothing but a tangle of cables in lines and circles above the heads of pedestrians.

They asked a senior communications executive at the electrical authority about the situation.

Charn Patthamawipak said that some work had been done but much remains. He said that and high voltage cables are only very high up and on the lower reaches are cables that represent no danger to the public.

He said the situation had got like it is today due to cost cutting. If all the cables were not lumped together costs would be higher and there would be a need for many more posts to hold them up.

He said it is not pretty but not dangerous.

Low hanging cables are likely to be optic fiber for internet connections, phone cables, cable TV, wires for the controlling of the traffic and CCTV cables.

High power electricity wires carrying 22,000 volts were only very high up, he said. He conceded that some cables carrying up to 400 volts could be as low as eight meters.

Thai Visa / Thai Rath

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