By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE LAWYERS COUNCIL of Thailand plans to take legal action against Charoen Pokphand Foods Co and the Fisheries Department, both being allegedly held accountable for severe ecological damage literally done by imported blackchin tilapia fish.
The Lawyers Council plans to file a civil lawsuit upcoming Wednesday in pursuit of damage compensation pay from CPF and the Fisheries Department for having caused the drastic ecological and environmental damage to coastal areas in Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram and Petchaburi since the blackchin tilapia were imported by the giant firm from Ghana in 2010 and the predator fish rapidly spawned in natural waters and gluttonously devoured other fish, shrimps and small aquatic animals raised by local villagers, an informed source said.
A specified amount of damage pay sought from CPF and the government agency to compensate for financial losses borne over the last one decade and a half by those aquatic farmers is yet to be declared in court, the source said.
Nevertheless, CPF has reportedly offered to buy a large quantity of blackchin tilapia for 15 baht per kilo from aquatic farmers and others to help contain an increased number of the predator fish which survive and breed in freshwater, seawater and brackish water in 17 coastal provinces including Bangkok’s outlying areas.
CPF has earlier excused that all the predator fish imported and raised in the firm’s research ponds in Yisarn subdistrict of Ampawa district of Samut Songkhram had been completely “destroyed.”
Meanwhile, MPs on both sides of the House aisle have advised the authorities to launch contingency measures to literally terminate the blackchin tilapia in all natural waters before they could possibly turn a national ecological crisis into an international one adversely affecting Thailand’s neighbouring countries.
The lawmakers said the predator fish might probably spread massively and rapidly from the eastern border province of Trat and the southern province of Songkhla to natural waterways in Cambodia and Malaysia respectively.
All available fishnets and hunter fish such as sea bass may be largely used to urgently get rid of the havoc-wreaking fish in all affected waters of those coastal provinces, they said.
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Top and Front Page: Some blackchin tilapia fish that villagers caught. Both photos: Naewna
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