Phumtham warned to never export 10-year-old rice

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER-cum-Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai was today (May 11) cautioned to never export the 10-year-old, non-quality rice from government stock to an African nation as allegedly planned.

Former Democrat MP Charnchai Issarasenarak said Phumtham, known as a right-hand man of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, would definitely render immense damage to Thailand’s reputation as the world’s largest or second largest rice exporter, if some 15,000 tonnes of the 10-year-old rice was delivered for sale to the yet-unspecified African country or anywhere else.

Instead of releasing the non-quality rice out of government stock, Charnchai suggested the Pheu Thai-attached deputy prime minister-cum-commerce minister to take legal action against those who may have got undue gains from the decade-old rice under a corruption-riddled rice subsidy programme earlier run by a previous Pheu Thai government headed by deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and then stored at private warehouses by the Public Warehouse Organisation during the time of a previous government under former prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Despite a previous court ruling which judged Yingluck guilty of duty negligence charges and sentenced her in absentia to five years in jail, the deputy prime minister-cum-commerce minister has allegedly tried to justify the rice subsidy campaign to the extent that nothing of misconduct had occurred at policy level at which the deposed woman prime minister had performed and that it had only involved those at working level including some corrupt government officials and rogue rice traders.

Phumtham who had contended and literally demonstrated that the 10-year-old rice was still “safely edible” was recently dared to serve it to his fellow cabinet members during their weekly meetings at Government House for lunch rather than to have soldiers, especially conscripts, eat it. According to government critics, the 10-year-old rice could probably contain chemical residue which would be hazardous to the consumer’s health.

“You are Thailand’s commerce minister and not a lawyer acting on behalf of Yingluck pertaining to the rice subsidy programme of which the court had earlier judged her guilty.

“A huge sum of the taxpayers’ money had been spent to clear debt due to the damaging programme. It was not Yingluck’s money or the Shinawatra family’s money. Neither was a single baht of the damage compensation money come from the Pheu Thai,” the former lawmaker said.

CAPTIONS:

Top: Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai with the 10-year-old rice.

Front Page: Former Democrat MP Charnchai Issarasenarak, left, and Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, right. Both photos: Thai Rath

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