BANGKOK, December 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A Thai Muslim girl who thought she would meet the Thai Prime Minister after she found the origami bird, supposedly folded by him, was disappointed when she discovered that the phone number on the wing belonged to a construction worker.

The 12-year-old girl from Narathiwat’s Rusoh district who said Tuesday, December 7, she had found the origami bird folded by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was disappointed when it turned out the phone number on the wing belonged to a construction worker in Bangkok, The Nation newspaper reported Wednesday, December 8.

On Tuesday, Rusoh district chief Thanawat Buranapipob announced that Nurita Malaiman, a sixth-grader at Ban Yataupakarn Wittaya School, had found the premier’s origami bird, the supposed authenticity of which was initially confirmed, containing a message written on both wings and a mobile number, the paper added.

Thanawat also said he contacted the premier’s secretary-general, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, to schedule an appointment for the girl to meet with Thaksin in person and that he had kept the bird in a safe place for fear of losing it.

But reporters who called the mobile number discovered that it belonged to a construction worker named Sompong, who works in Bangkok’s Lat Phrao district, according to the daily.

Sompong said he did not fold any paper birds and thought it might be a trick played by someone else. “I’m sorry for the girl and her family. They might have bad feelings about this,” he said.

Meanwhile, Manida Mae, the 12-year-old girl from Narathiwat’s Tak Bai district who found the bird made by Prachuap Khiri Khan’s Chareondee gold shop that offered a reward of Bt1 in gold, will ask for an education fund from the shop instead, said the girl’s mother, The Nation said.

The shop confirmed the deal to reward her with money identical to the gold’s value, said Manida’s mother, Ningo.

Government Spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said Shinawatra told a cabinet meeting Tuesday that the origami-bird project had gone well, “creating good feelings among residents of the three southernmost provinces because they learned of people’s concerns about the violence”.

However, it is not national government policy to reward people with items or money for the retrieved birds, he said, nor did the government plan any continuous schemes like building paper-bird monuments. Any exchanges by local administrations were just their way of participating.

Thailand's 5 million Muslims, about four percent of the population of predominantly Buddhist Thailand, resent the country's refusal to recognize their language, culture and Malay ethnicity.

Most Thai Muslims live in the five southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are the only Muslim majority provinces in the majority-Buddhist kingdom.

The South was a rich Malay kingdom until it was overrun by the Buddhist kingdom of Siam in the late 16th century when it declared its full independence from its earlier status of semi-independence under the rule of the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.

In 1909, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Siam as part of a treaty negotiated with the British Empire.