THE TROUBLE with corruption on Phuket is that the mafia keeps all the ill-gained loot.

If the long, oppressive era of graft on Phuket is finally going to be brought to a close by two innovative anti-corruption campaigns, all that misappropriated money could certainly be better spent.

Who knows - education and health could be improved. Phuket might have a brighter future. And what about poverty?

When protection money goes into the pockets of a few, those further down the social ladder are always the ones who suffer.

Phuket's present-day poor turned out yesterday at the Kusoldharm Phuket Foundation in Phuket City's Poonpol district, where 3000 sea gypsies from Koh Sireh and Rawai gathered for a twice-yearly handout of rice and other food.

Most of them waited patiently for the ceremony at the foundation's Chinese temple to finish, with tasty buns, fruit and meat laid out in the quadrangle, ready to be blessed, then consumed by the gods or the poor.

An unwelcome burst of rain failed to dampen enthusiasm for those who waited outdoors. And once the drops stopped, the umbrellas even proved useful.

Gypsy families found they could turn the umbrellas inside out, to catch more traditional goodies when Phuket Police Commander Major General Pekad Tantipong joined in tossing food over the fence to start the gift-giving.

But first, in a fiery ceremony along the banks of a nearby canal, ancestral spirits had to be appeased. Then volunteers began handing out the thousands of bags of rice, fruit and foodstuffs.

The Kusoldharm Foundation's charitable role on Phuket is to help the poor and deal with the dead. Their ambulances also often save lives because the volunteers are usually the first on the scene at crashes on Phuket's roads.

It was an idle thought yesterday as the island's poor waited for food. Without corruption on Phuket, would the lives of the poor and the disenfranchised be improved? No doubt.