Suvarnabhumi’s security takes a beating
The list of farces for what was to be Thailand’s showpiece are well documented and seemingly endless; runway cracks, lack of toilets, the Don Mueang move, cramped arrival areas, illegal tour touts, delay on the midfield terminal, the bomb detector scandal and it goes on.
Attention is now being focused on airport security, or the lack thereof. Six months after receiving a damning report card on its security from international aviation experts, Airports of Thailand (AoT), which oversees Suvarnabhumi, has yet to take action.
The Loxley-ICTS consortium has 10-year search and surveillance contracts with the AoT to oversee security, and reports are surfacing that the AoT board will meet next week to evaluate their performance.
The Bangkok Post noted that the AoT had addressed the security issue raised by the team of experts on 6 January 2007, a week after the Bangkok bombing and even threatened to terminate the consortium’s contract.
To the consortium’s credit, they previously scored well on the search component of the security survey, but fell way below par on overall airport surveillance.
Chaturongkapol Sodmanee, deputy director of Suvarnabhumi airport, yesterday told a Thai newspaper that the consortium had made some improvements, lifting its score to 6-7 points on a 10 scale, hardly a confidence-building grade.
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