| The Tsunami Early Warning System being set up by Thailand will also be able to issue timely alerts to South Asian nations, the Thai official in charge of developing the network said here.
The National Disaster Early Warning System which will be fully operational by the end of 2006 can also provide tsunami warnings to India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, according to Smith Dharmasaroja, Chairman of the Committee for the Development of an Early System for Thailand.
Mr Smith, who is a Vice-Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, was speaking at a seminar on media coverage of disasters organized here on 28 and 29 April by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance and the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung foundation. Journalists from South and Southeast Asia were present.
On April 29, the resort island of Phuket off Thailand's western Andaman Sea coast, also witnessed a massive emergency evacuation drill supervised by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Some 2,000 people took part in the exercise.
The Thai Prime Minister later declared that the tsunami early warning system would be 80 per cent complete by the middle of this month.
The state-of-the-art system will issue simultaneous alerts to radio and TV stations in Thailand and text message warnings to the country's 20 million mobile phone subscribers.
It will also trigger off sirens on a network of 30 metre-high warning towers being installed along the country's beach resorts.
By: MCOT, Thailand
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