The Community Information Centre (CIC) will continue to be under Bhutan Development Bank Limited’s (BDBL) management. This was decided in the National Assembly last week.
The Member of Parliament (MP) from Panbang, Dorji Wangdi, moved the motion in the house to change the management of CICs from BDBL to gewog administrations. He pointed out that CICs were part of the decentralization process but the centres are functioning independently from the gewog administration.
“Because the CICs are not under the gewog administration, their working system is different across all 205 gewogs. We visited the CICs and except for a few services most are not available.”
The centres were first established in 2010 and were managed by the Bhutan Post. During the tenure of the second government, the management was handed over to the BDBL on a temporary basis.
While the opposition MPs supported the motion, the Government MPs thought otherwise.
“We need to ask whether the services will improve if we shift the management from one to another. Instead, if we keep it as it is by improving and strengthening the services and also if needed with more people, it will benefit the people,” Gyem Dorji, Draagteng_Langthil MP, said.
“The BDBL’s mandate is not to provide general services. This might be the reason why people are not getting the services as expected. As per the decentralization process, if we give the responsibility to the local governments, they will be able to give better services,” Dupthob, Bumdeling_Jamkhar MP said.
Speaking about the status of the centres, the Information and Communications Minister, Karma Donnen Wangdi said that the centres incurred a loss of close to Nu 30 M in 2017. He also informed the house that the BDBL has asked for a government subsidy of Nu 376 M for the next five years, to keep the CICs running.
The house, via votes, decided that the management of the centres will be kept as it is under BDBL. Among the 43 members present, 17 voted in favour and 24 decided against the motion, while two members abstained from voting.
