Slow internet speed in the gewog centres has been a concern for the local leaders of Trongsa for quite some time now. They said this situation delays not just the online service delivery but the offline ones as well.
The issue was discussed at the recent Dzongkhag Tshogdu (DT).
Local leaders said the issue was brought to the notice of the concerned authority in the district but to no avail. They asked the House to send its resolution either to the Information and Communications Ministry or the government for prompt action.
Explaining the inconvenience, the DT chairperson said, uploading and processing official documents online is time-consuming.
“Since all the five gewogs face the same problem, we will submit our resolution to the Information and Communications Ministry or the concerned department. We will ask them to resolve the issue at the earliest. Moreover, the government is also encouraging an online exchange of information and official documents,” said Ugyen Tenzin, the DT Chairperson in Trongsa.
He added, at all, if need be, the gewog administrations could look at reprioritizing the gewog fund and solve the slow internet connectivity on its own:
“When we ask for documents from schools, they say there is an internet problem. Similarly, when we ask the livestock official, the reason is the same. The problem is common everywhere. If this continues for months and years, it will be difficult for us to provide timely services to the citizens.”
The district’s ICT officer said the problem raised is genuine. It exists because the gewog office has to share its internet connection with the rest of the extension offices located within its premises.
“I have forwarded the same complaint to the Department of Information and Telecom and they said that they have forwarded to Finance Ministry for the Budget. So this time they got the budget also and soon the Internet speed would be increased and there won’t be any problem,” said Samuel Pradhan, the ICT Officer for Trongsa.
Currently, the Information and Communications Ministry has subscribed a speed of about 134 megabytes per second (Mbps) for the 205 gewogs in the country. This means each gewog receives just about 0.7 Mbps making a slow internet connection an issue in all gewog offices.
Passang
