Para rubber soil cement roads to be constructed in all Thai villages

BANGKOK, November 28 (TNA) - As part of official measures to boost the prices of natural rubber, the Thai Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and other relevant parties will join forces in the construction of Para rubber soil cement roads in all villages across the country. Permanent Secretary for Agriculture and Cooperatives Anan Suwannarat announced the joint plan on Wednesday, saying that he has asked relevant units under his ministry to quickly work together with the Ministry of Interior to materialize the initiative. Under the joint plan, Anan acknowledged, Para rubber soil cement roads will be constructed in all 80,000 villages nationwide at the targeted distance of one kilometer each. The senior official stated that every one kilometer-distance of Para rubber soil cement roads uses about 10 tons of the natural rubber, with the Department of Highways, under the Thai Ministry of Transport, set to issue by December 10, 2018 a handbook on a targeted area in each village where the construction of the Para rubber soil cement road is recommended. According to the senior official, a Para rubber soil cement road is normally required to use the natural rubber as its compound three times higher than an Asphalt road. Thai Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Kritsada Boonrach told journalists, meanwhile, that soldiers of Thailand's Armed Forces Development Command have also supported the use of Para rubber for the improvement or the repair of many provincial rouge roads. Assoc. Prof. Witsanu Attavanich of the Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart University, proposed, on the other hand, that the Thai government should encourage local rubber growers in inappropriate or unproductive areas, through official incentives, to switch to grow other economic crops with more productive yields, as updated statistics, recently released by the Land Development Department, showed that there were almost 5 million rai (2.5 rai = 1 acre) of inappropriate or unproductive rubber plantation areas in the country. Besides, to solve the problem of low rubber prices in the country on the sustainable basis, the Thai government should offer incentives to local farmers to grow more varieties of natural rubber that meet higher market demand, like the Russian Dandelion and the Guayule varieties popularly used in the tyre production industry, and to furniture producers for their more use of natural rubber trees as their raw materials. (TNA)