Thailand logistics group to sue Port Authority of Thailand

For those of you who don’t know the government of Thailand has been more or less paralyzed lately as anti-government protesters have literally occupied the prime minister’s office and other government offices for weeks. Some of the protesters succeeded in temporarily shutting down the popular resort area airports of Phuket and Krabi, but what really ticked off the trade community was the Port Authority union shut down, in conjunction with the protesters, of the government run Klong Toey port near Bangkok, not to mention the State Railway union strike that affected trains nationwide. For the most part the shut down of the port did not aversely affect the flow of goods as a lot of the cargo coming out of Thailand flows through the privately run terminals in Laem Chabang. And most customers using Klong Toey simply re-routed their containers through Laem Chabang, but of course it cost them more to do this. Hence, the lawsuit by the Land Transport Federation of Thailand:

Federation secretary Thongyu Khongkant said the suit would demand compensation of about 300 million baht from the PAT union as the first defendant, with the PAT and its executives the second and third targets.

”The port authority and board of directors are responsible,” he said.

The union shut down the Klong Toey port from Sept 3-5 as part of the anti-government protests led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

Consequently, shippers had to pay an extra 2,000 baht or more to transfer each of their containers from Klong Toey to Laem Chabang port in Chon Buri, 120 km southeast of Bangkok.

”We want to set a standard for those in charge of public services. The case will not be settled out of court,” he said.

Wow. Sounds like they are pretty serious.