Mr Lersak told The Phuket News that he would use a system of “participatory budgeting” and a real-time budget tracking system that the public can see.
Rewat Areerob, the former PPAO President running for re-election with the ‘Phuket Yat Dai Party’, argues the budget is already publicly available on the PPAO website.
“I have a policy of transparency through participatory budget management, allowing the public to be directly involved in shaping the local budget through ‘Participatory Budgeting’,” Mr Lersak said.
“So, what is this system? It’s a verifiable, real-time budget tracking system that publishes detailed income and expenditure information of the PPAO,” he explained.
“We are committed to ensuring that every baht, every satang, of the budget is spent effectively for the benefit of people in Phuket. By leveraging technology and data-driven expertise, we will usher in a new era of transparency and efficiency,” he added.
“This is one of our main heart policies, and I have given my best and put in a lot of effort for this election,” Mr Lersak concluded.
Mr Rewat countered that PPAO budgets are already published on the PPAO website. “As usual, in the procurement section,” Mr Rewat told The Phuket News.
“The documents can be accessed online or requested directly from the PPAO for each project,” he said.
The Phuket News notes that the Procurement Announcements on the PPAO website ‒- like all other websites for local government offices and agencies ‒ bury key budget announcements amid a barrage of announcements for the likes of photocopy supplies and motorbike repairs.
One such PPAO Procurement Announcement is titled “Announcement of the winner of the bidding for the contract for the health service system and data management project under the Phuket Health Sandbox project for fiscal year 2025 by selection method”.
Touch Technology Co Ltd was announced the winner of the contract, approved at B16.42 million, “including value added tax and other taxes, transportation costs, registration fees and all other expenses”.
For a B16mn contract, the post has been viewed only 41 times (twice by The Phuket News).
However, the announcement does not include any details of specifically what the contract is for. To find that, viewers will have to perform another search for the project, hoping they use the right keywords.
Searches rarely reveal the correct results. According to the PPAO Procurement Announcement, the PPAO is not spending any funds on the island hosting the Thailand Biennale, Phuket 2025 international arts fair.
Further confusing matters, the Search box on the PPAO Procurement Announcements webpage is not for Procurement Announcements. Although it is not marked as such, the Search box is for the whole PPAO website.
Meanwhile, local government offices rarely include actual budget amounts in their announcements for local projects, leaving the actual amount of taxpayer funds being spent in obscurity.