Bangkok: Pakornwut invites six agencies to update and learn from national disaster warnings. The agencies promise Cell Broadcast will be available this July. Next month, the system will be tested. They noted the authority to order and approve warning messages. If the authorized person is not there, someone at the center must be able to approve.
According to Thai News Agency, Mr. Pakornwut Udompipatsakul, a party-list MP from the Prachachon Party and chairman of the House of Representatives’ subcommittee on studying the guidelines for the preparation of a national warning system, stated that the committee had been established for a long time and had almost finished its report. However, the earthquake on March 28 caused all members of the committee to agree to extend the period of time to use the incident as a case study in the report to study what the warning system should be like in the future, not just earthquakes. In today’s committee meeting, each agency will be asked about lessons learned and what support the agency needs to make the warning system more effective.
The House of Representatives’ Telecommunications Committee called agencies to discuss the Cell Broadcast system last week, and it was a good sign that agencies and the government understood after the incident that this system should be urgently available. The agency promised that it would be ready for use by July. The system will be tested in early May, but it is a world-sure system, and discussions have already taken place with Apple. The committee members noted that, in addition to technology, the ordering process must be streamlined. Even if a message is sent to the public within 5-10 seconds, it will have to go through many steps before it can be approved to send. This will make the warning system effective. The agency promised that there were discussions about this and that it is important.
‘I visited the National Disaster Warning Center and saw that there was a problem with the command authority. It has to be the center’s executives who will approve the message. For example, if you travel abroad, what do you do if you have to send a warning in 2-3 minutes? The agency said that there were initial discussions about expanding the scope of authority according to the existing law or changing some regulations that do not need to go through the council, such as contacting the first, second, third person, or the unit director in the command room to give them legal authority,’ said Mr. Pakornwut.
The agencies that provided information to the committee included the Royal Irrigation Department, the Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning, the Department of Mineral Resources, the National Research Office, the Director of the Earthquake Monitoring Division, the Meteorological Department, and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.