Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Where to find out about new districts or provinces?

As I had recently found the source for the decisions of the local government units - all those posting labeled Board meeting are from that source - I still don't know where to find news on new district or provinces before they get published in the Royal Gazette. Of course right now the municipality news are much more important for these a lot of activity is going on, and to make it worse the publication in the Royal Gazette has quite some backlog for those. Also, there was just one new district the last 10 years, and no new province for 15 years, so unless the Interior Ministry has a backlog of planned creations waiting for the Royal Gazette wouldn't hurt that much. In the past the official announcement for district and provinces were mostly some time before they became effective anyway.

But even though it is not such important, I still try to find such a up-to-date source. As there was just a single new district recently - Wiang Kao created in 2006 - I cannot be sure I have found the right one yet, but it seems new districts are decided in the Thai cabinet, such as this transcript from February 21 2006. This includes a section titled เรื่อง ร่างประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย เรื่อง แบ่งเขตท้องที่อำเภอภูเวียง จังหวัดขอนแก่น ตั้งเป็นกิ่งอำเภอเวียงเก่า (About the draft announcement by the Thai ministry of Interior about changing the area of Phu Wiang district, Khon Kaen province, creating Minor district Wiang Kao). The announcement in the Gazette came in May 2006, just three month later. The cabinet approval was apparently the last step before the announcement. Even more interesting than this final approval would be transcripts of the earlier planning steps within the MOI, but at least Google does not find anything which looks like that. I am simply curious a lot if and when there will be new districts, subdistricts or provinces.

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