The Nation
Won’t pay Bt9 bn in compensation; says contract was illegal to start with
Pollution Control Disease (PCD) yesterday insisted that it will notpay BT 9 billion as compensation to joint venture construction companyNVPSKG, the project’s contractor of the Klong Dan wastewater treatment after the Thai Arbitration Institute (TAI) had issued a verdict on thecase.
” PCD will not accept this illegal verdict and the contract with theprivate company was invalid since it was signed at first time. Thatmeans there was no contract with the private company,” PCD’s directorgeneral Supat Wangwongwattan said.
Panel of arbitrators chaired by Witoon Tangtrongjit and other arbitrators including Satient Wongwachian and Kian Permboon onThursdays had read the verdict on the case and asked PCD to pay Bt 4,983,324,383 and US$ 31,035,780 as compensation and 7.5 percent as interest of Bt 4,424,099,982 and US$ 26,434,636 which counted from 28 February 2003. PCD also must return letters of guarantees and fee worth Bt 6 million to NVPSKG.
Supat said the total of compensation that PCD has to pay to NVPSKG was about Bt 9 billion.
He said PCD had received the copy of TAI’s verdict on January 24 after that PCD had sent its official letter to object the verdict and to notcomply the verdict. PCD also sent its letters to Finance Ministrysince February 2.
According to the 2002 Arbitrary Act’s article 40, PCD will appeal to the court within 90 days since it had received the copy of verdict.
Additionally, the Office of Prime Minister’s regulation has allowed the state agency to not comply the arbitrator’s verdict when stateagency learns that the verdict is illegal.
Under the same regulation, the state agency also must send the copy ofverdict and its clarification to the finance ministry within 15 days to ask the recommendation from the ministry. State agency must sendthe letter to inform its litigant about this process.
Supat said PCD had letter to the Office of the Attorney General since February 10 and now it is waiting for the answer from finance ministry next month. However, if the finance ministry will have a final verdict and demand PCD to pay Bt 9 billion to private company, PCD have to accept this verdict but it has no idea where it could get this big amount of money to pay the company.
“Now we insist that we will not pay and do not accept the TAI’s verdict,” he said.
