The news came to the fore after The Phuket News received a photo showing the fuel truck carrying out its refuelling at 8:53am yesterday morning (Nov 5).
The Phuket News had already been informed that the practice had continued despite warnings earlier this year from the Phuket office of the Ministry of Energy and the Chief of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation division at Rawai Municipality (DDPM-Rawai).
The truck photographed yesterday bears the same license plate of the one that was photographed carrying out refuelling on the Rawai beachfront in May this year.
Phuket Energy Ministry office Chief Wirot Damkong told The Phuket News today (Nov 6), “I will send our officers to work with police – and with the Phuket Land Transport Office – to track down the driver and we will fine this person for refuelling in a public place.”
Mr Wirot repeated that refuelling in a public place is illegal under the Fuel Oils Control Act, as he had already explained earlier this year. (See story here.)
However, Mr Wirot did not identify which section of the act was breached or define what the penalty is.
Pannee Raknai, who serves as the Rawai Municipality Chief Administrative Officer (Palad) and Chief of DDPM-Rawai, told The Phuket News, “I will report to our council that the truck in this photo has done it again, and we will make sure the offender is fined.”
However, Ms Pannee repeated, also as explained earlier this year, that the municipality itself is powerless to issue any fine for refuelling in a public area as there are no municipal regulations governing the practice – unless there is a spillage, for which the council may issue a fine for polluting the environment.
Regardless, Ms Pannee said she expected the fine to be no more than B10,000.