Bangkok - Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport is
distributing sleeping pills to neighbouring residents in an effort to
lull growing complaints about noise pollution, news reports said
Monday.
Residents living near the capital's new airport told the Bangkok
Post newspaper that home-deliveries of sleeping pills were the
airport's latest remedy for communal insomnia and stress caused by
the constant overhead jet traffic.
'First they gave us earplugs, then sleeping pills,' said Thanatos
Preeprem, a sleep-deprived Suvarnabhumi neighbour. He and other
residents living near the airport said sleeping pills were delivered
by a mobile medical unit run by the Airports of Thailand (AoT), the
state enterprise that manages the 3.9-billion-dollar airport.
'And now that some of us have developed respiratory problems,
possibly caused by oil vapour from the aircraft, AoT suggested we
should buy face masks,' said Thanatos.
Some 32 communities in the airport's vicinity have threatened to
launch a balloon protest on Friday to halt all flights unless the AoT
meets their demands to be compensated for constant noise pollution.
The protesters were scheduled to hand heir petition to the AoT
on Monday.
The planned balloon protest was prompted by a cabinet decision on
May 29 to reduce the 'noise hazard zone' around the airport,
excluding scores of homeowners from state compensation that might
have allowed them to move.
The community uproar is the latest of several mishaps to rattle
Bangkok's new airport, touted as the pride of the nation by former
premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The massive project first suffered decades of delay and was then
rushed through by Thaksin during his premiership between 2001 to
2006. The construction process was plagued by corruption scandals and
claims of faulty design which seemed justified when cracks were
discovered in its taxiways a month after the official opening on
September 28, 2006.
Suvarnabhumi, or 'Golden Land,' as Marco Polo named South-east
Asia in his famous travels, cost Thailand 3.9 billion dollars and
about four decades to construct.
The project was born in the early 1970s when the government
purchased 3,238 hectares for it in eastern Bangkok.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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