Mobile kitchens provide a relief for flood victims

Mobile kitchens and drinking water trucks have been deployed by the military in the Deep South to help out hungry and thirsty flood victims who have no access to clean water and food due to flooding. 

          During a trip to Narathiwat on December 26 to visit people affected by flooding, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha paid a visit to one of the mobile kitchens of the 1st infantry battalion of the of the 5th infantry regiment based in Tambon Na Nark, Tak Bai district of Narathiwat.

          The prime minister personally fried some eggs which were to be put in lunch boxes of boiled rice topped with chicken fried with basil leaves and fried vegetables.   Altogether 1,200 lunch boxes were to be distributed from the mobile kitchen that day.

          The mobile kitchen is in fact a six-wheel truck converted into a kitchen equipped with cooking gas and other cooking utensils except dishes which are not necessary and replaced with styrofoam boxes.  The kitchens are capable of providing freshly-cooked food which is more favoured by flood victims than ready-made food which occasionally turned bad by the time they reached the needy.

          A fleet of 18 mobile kitchens and drink water trucks was sent out on December 23 on a mission to provide food and drinking water to the flood victims in an official launch of the operations presided over by Lt-Gen Prakarn Cholayuth, commander of the Fourth Army Region.

          Each kitchen is staffed with 6-7 army officers well trained in mass cooking to serve many people at a time.

          Raw materials used in the preparation of food are normally obtained from the localities.  Paramilitary rangers based in the localities will inform local community leaders of the arrival of the mobile kitchens in advance and ask them to get the materials for cooking.  Sometimes, local villagers were asked to help in the cooking of Halal food.

          A mobile kitchen and a water truck travel in a pair so that food and drinking water can be provided at the same time to ease the hardship of the flood victims in the Deep South.