MEMBERS of the Kusoldharm charitable foundation held a street protest last night and today sent a letter to Phuket's Governor asking for two senior office-bearers to be replaced. They are also angry at the drug-testing of members.

One member was arrested yesterday after a positive purple response to a drug test by police and Phuket Public Health officials, and others are upset at having to undergo future random drug testing.

The charity's major activities are among the poor and in caring for bodies after road crashes and other tragedies. Using a fleet of ambulances - once they could only afford pickups - the Kusoldharm crews have a reputation for often being at the scene of fatal collisions well before police.

Wages of about 4000 baht a month are supplemented by a commission on each body, so crews from rival charities often compete to be first at tragic events. Shootouts are not unknown in Bangkok. Although competition is also intense on Phuket, such incidents appear to be much rarer on the island.

The determination of Public Health to keep taking urine samples from about 60 foundation members, especially those who work the difficult night shifts, was the prime trigger yesterday for anger among the Kusoldharm crews.

They were granted police permission to take their protest to the streets of Poonpol, perhaps Phuket City's most notorious neighborhood, as long as traffic was allowed to continue to flow freely.

Their grievances were aired in amplified speeches and followed up today with a protest letter to Governor Wichai Praisa-ngob. The senior office-bearers have been accused of promoting members who had not done the appropriate training.

In Thai society, the Kusoldharm Foundation, along with others including Bangkok's famous ''bodysnatchers,'' proudly carry out the task of competing to care for the dead.

The Kusoldharm HQ, in the Phuket City suburb that has the island's most sordid after-dark nightlife, and where strolling Western men during the day are likely to be offered sex with teenagers, is a mixture of life and death, and much more.

Well-used ambulances line the car park and in a corner sits a pile of coffins, with a noticeboard nearby carrying sad photographs embracing the foundation's work. Inside the central Chinese temple are well-lit shrines of great interest, with the most significant being of a female deity, upstairs and tucked away, and spilling pearl necklaces.

We came here once when rice and other foodstuffs were being handed out to Phuket's poor. The island may have a reputation for five-star tourism. At the Kusoldharm HQ, it's also possible to find five-star poverty.

It was the Kusoldharm crews and members of other charitable foundations who flocked from all over Thailand after the 2004 tsunami to pluck bodies by the thousands from the Andaman's beaches, and treat them with due respect at coastal temples. All rivalry and commissions were forgotten.

No other country we've visited - certainly not in the West - has such an admirable in-built capacity to deal with the initial horror of a large-scale disaster. Competition has its place in everything.

Some of Phuket's expats will not encounter the Kusoldharm Foundation crews . . . until they die. These are the people who tidy up when people ''pass away,'' as some Westerners coyly put it in their struggle to come to terms with death.

Almost certainly, as is the tradition, the Kusoldharm crew will pause long enough to have a group photograph taken with the body. This is their way.

Phuketwan will never forget the recovery of the bodies of five dive tourists, among seven victims of a tragic capsize last year.

Several days after that calamity, divers freed the five bodies from the wreck on the bottom, not that far off Patong.

Having performed one difficult task, the divers were not prepared to transfer the bodies to the recovery vessel, largely because the dead tourists had to be lifted by hand more than a metre above the sea surface to be loaded onto the boat.

When the recovery vessel joined the divers at the scene, the five bodies were floating on the surface. The Kusoldharm crew jumped straight in. Within minutes, they had all the bodies on board.

Since that day, unruly characters though they may be, the Kusoldharm crews have had our undying admiration.