Volunteers wanted
The government has asked the Civil Service Commission to devise a package with incentives to attract officials to take up posts in the newly reopened Southern Border Provinces Administration Command (SBPAC), Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said yesterday.
Only half of the 199 positions have been filled, he told reporters after the weekly Cabinet meeting."The government's idea is to motivate officials who volunteer to work in those three southern provinces," Surayud said. "The officials who go and work there have to face hardship and sacrifice and must have good intentions to solve the unrest," he told reporters. The current government has re-instated the SBPAC as part of its plan to quell the ongoing violence in the Muslim-majority South. Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra dissolved the centre about a year after he came into power, arguing that it had outlived its usefulness. But the organisation has been credited with easing the upsurge in violence in the 1970s by providing a forum where local community, religious leaders and government officials could iron out their differences.
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