State railway seeks 400 to operate new airport link

Governor Yuthana Thapcharoen said the high-speed train from Makkasan to Suvarnabhumi Airport would need about 400 employees.

"The SRT's rehabilitation plan requires the state agency to minimise operating costs. The government also has a policy to maintain the workforce. SRT would therefore need to hire most of the personnel for the Airport Rail Link from an outside company," he said.

Meanwhile, the SRT has extended a free train service to cover four more routes: Bangkok-Chiang Mai, Bangkok-Ubon Ratchathani, Bangkok-Nong Khai and Bangkok-Sungai Kolok. The extension was approved by the Cabinet yesterday.

"This will allow passengers not to change trains and will deplete our monthly revenue by another Bt28 million," Yuthana said.

The free train service is part of the government's six measures to lower the cost of living for the public. While most of the package, worth nearly Bt40 billion, is used to subsidise gasohol and diesel prices, the government originally expected that it would need to spend Bt250 million to subsidise the train service until January 2009.

However, the Cabinet has not yet approved an emergency budget of Bt4.2 billion for the SRT, though the state agency said earlier that without the assistance it would have no money to pay salaries from October onwards.

Chief financial officer Arak Ratboriharn said earlier that SRT has to pay Bt500 million to Bt600 million in salaries monthly. The agency hopes that the Cabinet will speed up its consideration of the emergency liquidity injection. The matter was submitted for Cabinet consideration two months ago, but so far the Cabinet has delayed making a decision.

Due mainly to higher diesel prices, SRT expects to post losses of Bt9 billion this fiscal year, which will end in September.