AOT gives sleeping pills as panacea

For most people, acquiring sleeping pills or stress-relief drugs legally is not simple, as the medicines can't be bought over the counter.

But for villagers living near Suvarnabhumi airport, the drugs were delivered directly to their homes by Airports of Thailand (AoT) in the agency's latest attempt to silence residents' complaints about aircraft noise.

Thanatos Preeprem is among neighbours who received dozens of sleeping pills from the AoT's mobile medical unit this year.

"I did not expect that the doctor would prescribe controlled medications that easily," said the 35-year-old artist whose house is in Keha Nakhon 2 housing estate, around 400 metres from the north of the western runway.

The AoT's medical unit visited his community twice after the airport opened on Sept 28 last year.

On the first visit, the doctor gave him drugs that "help ease sleeping disorders" right after he complained that he had problems sleeping.

However, after finishing them, his insomnia problem still had not eased. So he met the medical unit again. This time they gave him yellow-white capsules clearly described as sleeping pills, after a quick check of his physical and mental condition.

"It seems that sleeping pills and stress relief drugs have become the airport's key measure to tackle the Suvarnabhumi noise problem," said Mr Thanatos, who has joined villagers from 32 communities around the airport in a struggle for proper compensation and mitigation schemes for people affected by aircraft noise over the past year.

According to the Bangkok Post's observation, a plane passes communities to the north of the runway every 2-5 minutes.

Mr Thanatos said the villagers' struggle had become fruitless since the AoT had failed to come up with any measures to mitigate aircraft noise. "First they gave us earplugs, then sleeping pills. And now that some of us have developed respiratory problems, possibly caused by oil vapour from the aircraft, AoT suggested that we should buy a face-mask," he said.

"Superficial solutions are all we can expect from the agency."

A public relations official working for the AoT's environmental department admitted that the agency's mobile medical unit had prescribed sleeping pills and anti-stress drugs to villagers who suffered from insomnia and stress.

However, the prescriptions were written only after a thorough examination of the patients' mental health by state doctors who joined AoT's mobile unit.

Most drug recipients were the elderly, said the official.