Victims vent their anger on Thai PM

Makeshift transport residents sit on a large piece of polystyrene foam during flooding in Bangkok.

BANGKOK: Frustrated flood victims berated Thailand's Prime Minister yesterday during her visit to inundated areas of Bangkok, one-fifth of which is now under water.

Thai authorities have advised more than 1 million people to evacuate but many have chosen to stay despite risks including electrocution, disease and lack of food and drinking water, complicating relief efforts.

Yingluck Shinawatra, facing the first test of her leadership, visited victims in the Don Mueang district in northern Bangkok, where an elderly man told her: ''You're here just for fun, not really to help, so don't come back.

A woman walks with her dog, in a floating box, across floodwater in a street next to the Chao Praya river in Bangkok.

Ms Yingluck asked residents living outside the city's flood barriers not to damage levees to save their own homes.

''Destroying levees along canals doesn't reduce the floodwaters but causes water to spread,'' she said.

Bangkok officials are struggling to maintain a system of dykes, canals and sandbag barriers designed to divert a slow- moving mass of floodwater around the city centre. Floods that spread over 63 of Thailand's 77 provinces over the past three months have killed 437 people.

While the centre of the capital remains dry, some northern and western parts have been submerged in dirty water.

The authorities have issued an evacuation order for eight districts out of 50 in the capital and for certain areas in four others.

The 12 districts have a combined official population of 1.7 million people.

Worst-hit residents have complained that their homes are being sacrificed to save shopping malls, luxury hotels and the houses of the wealthy elite, triggering protests and the destruction of some dykes.