PM to visit Thai far South Dec 13

BANGKOK, December 12 (TNA) - Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is scheduled to pay a renewed visit to Thailand's violence-plagued far South on December 13 to discuss latest developments and to listen to proposed solutions to relieve the violence. Yingluck told journalists of her scheduled fresh trip to the Thai deep South, after chairing a meeting of a government committee tasked with introducing and implementing policies and strategies on addressing problems in the Thai restive South, in which Cabinet members and other authorities concerned participated. Yingluck acknowledged that insufficient government forces and security equipment have become a loophole against public safety, including that of a number of teachers in the Thai far South, insisting that the government has kept gathering updated information and reviewing the situation and will, in the near future, send concerned Cabinet members to work in the southernmost Thai region for the sake of quicker decisions and actions against incidents. In response to reports that educational personnel have now lost their morale after frequent violent attacks against teachers in the Thai deep South recently and have demanded that the government set up a special unit to take care of them, the prime minister vowed that her administration will act in every possible mean to restore and to boost the southern border teachers' morale. Meanwhile, the Federation of Teachers in Three Southern Border Provinces resolved at Wednesday's meeting to close all schools in the southernmost Thai region from December 13-14 pending a review on security measures and operations by agencies concerned, and that the schools would be re-opened next week if teachers were confident in revised measures provided by local security forces. (TNA)