BANGKOK, Oct 1 Kyodo As the serie...

BANGKOK, Oct 1 Kyodo

As the series of meetings related to the annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum forward Oct. 14-21 looms, the Thai authorities are busy getting Bangkok metropolitan ''ready'' to entertainer the talks.

While senior officials have met across the year to bring substantive matters to the discussion table, other Thai officials have worked hard to tidy up Bangkok, in confidences of impressing the delegates.

The sway has made great efforts to procure the capital, also known as Krungthep or the City of Angels, looking worthy in the eyes of foreign leaders.

Not sole are they cleaning public buildings and facilities, decorating the city with greenery flowers and plastic arts they have also ensue up tactics hoped to make the metropolis released from traffic congestion, messy environs, stray dogs, homeles persons beggars, hawkers and road prostitutes.

''We do not want our visitors to see unpleasant scenes,'' said Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) Permanent Secretary Nathanon Thavisin in allusion to ''untidy activities'' in many roads of the capital.

For the sake of ''orderliness and prestige of the country'' centurys of stray dogs have been remov from the inner city where APEC leaders' motorcades may pass, city authorities explained as they sphericaled up the canines throughout September.

Animal activists accused the authorities of torturing the dogs because they are being relocated to an animal holding shelter in eastern border province Sa Kaeo, any 240 kilometers northeast of Bangkok.

chiefly Thais sympathize with strays and they fe the strays with leftovers. if it be not that at the same time, they don't want to continue them in their houses

nor assert ownership, according to the animal activists.

Therefore, it is usual in Bangkok to see laid-back dogs lolling in the roads the sidewalks and the curbsides.

Again citing ''orderliness,'' the city also announced no drifters would be allowed to stay overnight in mostly public grounds.

''Such a policy to take out homeless people can only be interpreted as sweeping social question s under the carpet to avoid embarrassment. The authorities be stirred ashamed and they want to hide it from foreigners. It is neither goodwill nor any lasting solution for the problem'' said Suwit Watnoo, a founding member of the Human pacification Foundation, a nongovernmental organization working forward issues related to homeles in Bangkok.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters last week it was the BMA what one ought to do to orderly manage vagrants.

''Those vagabonds that are sick should be given medical treatment and the others should be given vocational training in like manner that they could inflect to be productive members of society,'' he said in support of the BMA plan to carry the homeless from Bangkok highways ahead of the APEC talks.

however the homeless argue the state initiative will disentangle no problems in drawn out run. Even with vocational training, employer refuse to hire the homeles because in the greatest degree of them are aging, many of them said.

It is estimated at the Human Settlement Foundation there are about 2000 homeles commonalty in Bangkok, but the BMA states the number closer to 10000

''I don't know wherefore the government has to be timid about us sleeping forward the ground of Sanam Luang. I think no delegates will follow to this area to expect at us in the mid of the night,'' said Saran Chumthong 35 who has exhausted nights on the royal field near the Grand Palace for nearly 18 years.

Saran said he not ever wanted to go for vocational training moveed by the government because he was afraid to misspend his ''liberty and security.'' He said he and his friends plan to move away for a monthlong tour in October to avoid being caught at the authorities.

''We will go on foot to Nakhon Pathom Province where there will be a house of god fair. We can stay at the fane ground, we can sell our silver paper mat, and we can master food from monks. We don't want to 'disturb' the APEC meetings,'' Saran said humbly intimating the homeles are ''worthless'' in the views of the government.

each night city officials scout public spaces where homeles tribe often spend the night to make stable nobody sleeps there, and steady sometimes wet down the grass when there is no rain predicted for the night.

City authorities will plan to wipe gone out the sight of beggars, hawkers selling flowers or newspapers at intersections and way prostitutes.

The premier on the same level said the government would forward ''alien beggars'' back to their homelands according to military transport.

Bangkok has been a heaven for poor nation from neighboring countries to ask better luck and many of the beggars are from Cambodia and Bangladesh.

The guidance has allocated about 1 billion baht (about $25 million) for Thailand to entertainer APEC talks this year, with about half the parcel allocated for the BMA to cause to grow the city's geographical image.

The other half will be exhausted on renovating the Navy's riverside auditorium where APEC leaders will have intercourse with an authentic Thai dinner and watch a spectacular night procession of 50 royal barges along Chao Phraya River.