The cleaning of Bangkok begins ... but the fallout will probably be with us for an awful lot longer than the waters .....
The flood waters around Bangkok are receding .. slowly. Areas to the North and West of the city are still inundated but life for many of Bangkok's residents is returning to some kind of normality. Districts are organising 'Big Cleaning Days' where the public come out onto the streets and the community take charge of restoring their own districts. When I say the 'public', I really mean the local residents plus a few celebrities and politicians. We live in an age where the value of a photo opportunity increases in direct proportion to the size of the problem. 10,000,000 people have been directly affected by the 2011 floods ..... and that must equate to an awful lot of votes.
I can almost see the Press Secretaries advising their Masters .. 'Go to Pathum Thani and shake a broom with the masses''. Sadly, the Masters seem to take to their tasks with a certain lack of spirit. They smile for cameras but when the film stops rolling, I suspect that their brooms stop sweeping.
In the trail of the receding waters is garbage ... lots and lots of garbage. In some parts of the city, the regular garbage collection service probably hasn't happened for a month or more. Added to the problem of regular household garbage is the ground floor contents from over a million flooded homes ..... and that's an awful lot of festering rubbish that needs to be collected and disposed of. This is Thailand so I've no doubt that the garbage will all be collected, probably in record time ... but some will say that this will be achieved despite the efforts of the various authorities.
No comments:
Post a Comment