PHUKET: A meeting this week over the building of a camp for construction workers near a well-known Phuket school has resolved most concerns about the camp, according to the firm's representative.

The workers' camp, erected on vacant land near QSI International School in Phuket City, will house the staff who will build Phuket's new 600 million baht Central Festival underpass over two years.

Coincidentally, concerns about the camp near the school came as property developers on Phuket sought better conditions for the thousands of people on Phuket who live in the corrugated camps.

Thanusak Perdeath, President of the Real Estate Association of Phuket, told Phuket Governor Maitree Inthusud that workers' camps on Phuket needed provision for power and water.

''We need more workers, and conditions have to be improved,'' he told the meeting at Phuket Provincial Hall in Phuket City. ''Infrastructure is required.''

Most of the thousands of workers and their families in rough camps scattered across Phuket are Burmese, working legally and illegally. Estimates of their numbers run as high as 200,000.

The following day, a representative from QSI International was told at a separate meeting at the Highways Department offices in Phuket City that all of the workers on the underpass for construction firm Italian-Thai would be Thai.

Officials at the meeting resolved to settle the school's concerns by establishing a separate entrance for the camp away from the school, planting and growing trees and shrubs, and painting the three-metre wall around the camp dark green.

It's believed the school attempted through all avenues to have the camp relocated but has now - with some reluctance - accepted that the property has been leased to Italian-Thai.

The school was not consulted about the location of the camp, where 20 workers already live and where the number of workers will grow to 60, with their families, before construction of the massive underpass begins next month.

The school now plans increased lighting, a greater security guard presence, the installation of security cameras, and provision of more effective fencing.

The manager of the construction project, Narong Hori, said the head of the camp would monitor the residents of the camp as closely as possible. A security guard would be stationed at the camp's entrance around the clock.

Burmese laborers on Phuket, once subjected to a curfew, are now allowed greater freedoms and are generally regarded to be as law-abiding as Phuket's long-term citizens and tourists.

Broader concerns remain about conditions in camps all over Phuket, where power and water supplies are often limited and where hygiene and health care concerns remain difficult to resolve.

The camp near QSI International was being painted when Phuketwan dropped by late yesterday.