Bangkok Post Tuesday 08 February 2005 –

Egat union unmoved by landslide victory

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) labour union has vowed to continue with its tough anti-privatisation stance despite the Thai Rak Thai Party's landslide victory.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Sunday reiterated that planned privatisations would continue by listing the shares of state enterprises on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.  "We have been entrusted by voters to run the country again, and so we won't tolerate pressure against the privatisation policy," he said.  "Selling some shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand through a public offering is a normal procedure to raise capital. We are not selling off national assets as some critics have alleged."

State enterprise privatisation lost momentum early last year. Mr Thaksin then decided to postpone the plan indefinitely in the face of fierce opposition from Egat's labour union.

Sirichai Mai-ngarm, the union's president, said he was well aware of Thai Rak Thai's platform to privatise the state power agencies.  "We are still anti-privatisation and will continue fighting to keep Egat's status unchanged because the power sector should remain part of the country's basic infrastructure. The focus should be on service, not too much profit-taking," said Mr Sirichai.

He denied that the voters who gave Thai Rak Thai a huge majority wanted the government to sell off state-owned power utilities. He said he also believed the listing would only benefit a handful of rich investors close to Thai Rak Thai, which would be unfair to the people as a whole.

He urged the government to hold a national referendum to end the controversy.

Egat's management is in the process of canvassing employee opinions on how to improve the state power utility. The survey gave them 18 options, including listing some of Egat's power plants, or the entire state enterprise, on the stock market.

The union has submitted a letter to the Energy Ministry, demanding that Egat scrap the survey and hold a referendum instead.

A source said the survey was nearly finished and would shortly be submitted to the new government. The survey was delayed due to the sheer number of Egat employees nationwide, about 27,000 altogether, the source said.

The government says restructuring is needed for Egat because the utility will have to secure more than 400 billion baht in investment capital on its own by 2010 to finance the construction of four new power plants and transmission lines now that the Finance Ministry no longer guarantees Egat's loans.

Some of Egat's assets should be sold as a possible solution to its expansion finance needs, said the source.

About 60 billion baht, plus 50 billion to build transmission lines, would be needed to pay for the proposed Songkhla power plant, set to begin construction this year and finish in 2008. Another three plants are due in Bangkok and Chachoengsao.