Improvements in transparency and efficiency of agencies within the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration were his best achievements over the past 6 months, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt told Thai Enquirer.
“I have been trying my best to fulfill the policies that I have proposed,” he said over a phone interview.
“The increases in the level of transparency and the efficiency of bureaucracy are the most tangible achievements so far,” he said.
Chadchart said he came into power at the end of the fiscal year which meant that there was not that much budget left to go around but he said that he was able to cope with it.
When he was sworn in on April 1, there were less than 100 million Baht left in the BMA’s 2022 fiscal budget from the total of 79.85 billion Baht. For 2023, the budget was set at 79 billion Baht.
The current BMA under Chadchart was the first administration that publicized its spending plans to the public.
With a shortage of budget for new projects, the governor said he has been concentrating on fixing existing problems in the capital during the first 4 months of his office until the 2023 budget was approved in June.
“Around 100 policies are being fulfilled, some have been done and some are still ongoing,” he said while referring to the 215 policies that he promised to fulfill during the election campaign.
When asked if he is satisfied with his own performance as Bangkok Governor over the past 6 months, Chadchart said “I better leave that for other people to answer it”.
In a one-day online survey that was conducted by Thai Enquirer on Twitter with a sample size of 216 Twitter accounts, 77.3% said that they were satisfied with Chadchart’s performance over the past 6 months.
The elected governor, who received the highest votes in the history of the Bangkok gubernatorial election, came into office with high expectations from the public following the management of the previous military-installed governor.
The high expectations from the governorship of Chadchart came crashing down when the public heavily criticized him for the flooding in Bangkok during the rainy season.
Lately, he was also criticized by ultra-royalist groups for failing to stop pro-democracy protests during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
However, he also received a lot of praise for the Traffy Fondue application which allowed Bangkokians to file their complaints online.
Chadchart said at a seminar last week that more than 179,000 complaints have been filed via the platform and more than 117,000 of them have been resolved.
In his latest project which was a part of his 215 policies, the BMA worked with Osotspa, a beverage producer, to plant 2,500 trees on the company’s 4-rai plots near Srinagarindra and Krung Thep Kritha roads.
The plan is to plant 1 million trees during his administration to tackle the fine dust problem in the capital.