In the absence of a farm road in the villages of Serchhenmo and Haila under Wangphu Gewog in Samdrup Jongkhar, villagers are forced to feed their excess farm produce to cattle and carry the sick on a makeshift cot to the nearest hospital.
Currently, without a farm road, villagers have to walk almost 5 hours to reach the nearest road point.
Recently BBS came across a heart disease patient being carried on a makeshift stretcher by her relatives back to Serchhenmo village from a hospital. According to relatives they are taking the patient back to the village for some ritual and again the patient will be carried to hospital in the same manner.
And they say it is very difficult and risky to carry patients on hilly and rocky areas.
“I am taking my patient back to the village for some rituals. Without a road, patients are always carried like this and it is very difficult. Before about 3 to 4 patients died on the way only. Some times we are not able to get people to carry patients and many are left without visiting hospitals without a farm road here,” said Tshewang Choden, a farmer from Wangphu Gewog in Samdrup Jongkhar.
Similarly, the excess farm produce is fed to the cattle since they cant take it to the market without a road service.
“In Serchhenmo village we can grow any type of vegetables, we use to give all the excess vegetables to cattle. We don’t grow vegetables for commercial purposes since it will be difficult to transport,” said UgyenDorji, a farmer at Wangphu Gewog.
The villagers are not happy with the pace of the work on the farm road construction. Farm road construction work to Serchhenmo and Haila village was started in 2018 and today about only 2.8 kilometres of the road has been cleared.
In 2018 the Royal Government of Bhutan funded Nu 500,000 to pave the farm road of Serchhenmo and Haila village. However, the Wangphu Gewog Administration could pave about 800 metres with that budget.
Again in 2019, the gewog administration tried to clear about 4 kilometres of the farm road with a budget of Nu 2.1 M, but the contractor could pave only 2 kilometres and the contract was then terminated.
And the villagers are not happy with the clearing of few kilometres of road annually.
“We are expecting a farm road soon, clearing work has started but the road is still not connected to our village. We questioned gewog administration about our farm road construction, they told us it will be connected soon but clearing work has started many years before and it is still not connected,” shares Ugyen Dorji, a farmer in the gewog.
However, the gewog Administration says about Nu 100 M is needed to clear the 22-kilometre farm road till Haila village and they don’t have such a huge budget to spend at one go, and that was the reason for paving the road at such a slow pace.
This year, they have a budget of about Nu 5.4 M to clear about 3 to 4 kilometres of road and currently they are evaluating the tender documents.
The two villages have about 60 households.
Kinley Wangchuk
