It is that time of the year when truckers are busy loading and transporting sand in the country. However, truckers at the Wangjokha sand extraction site in Wangdue Phodrang are hardly getting a trip in a day. They say this is because the Natural Resources Development Corporation Limited or NRDCL has deployed only two sand dredging and loading machines at the site which is delaying the process.
Most truckers prefer sand from Wangjokha for its quality and cost. It is located below the Bajo-Khuruthang highway under Thedtsho Gewog in Wangdue Phodrang.
However, for nearly a hundred trucks, there are only two machines for extraction and loading. Hence, this is slowing the process and resulting in days of wait for the truckers at the site, affecting their income.
“It is a dry season and there is plenty of sand at this time. One problem with NRDCL is that they don’t deploy enough machines at the production site. Just one machine is taking time to load the sand as the number of trucks is huge here. In the past, we used to do at least two trips of sand in a day. But this winter, it is difficult to get even one trip a day,” said Karma Sonam, a trucker.
“I am in the common pool section. But my friends have kept their trucks here for more than two days now. They get stuck here for days and end up spending on food and lodging. There is a serious problem with just one machine being deployed by the NRDCL for sand extraction,” said Jigme Dorji, another trucker.
“It is massively affecting our income. We hardly get three to four thousand Ngultrum for a trip in a day. And when the office doesn’t deploy enough machines, it affects us when we cannot get more than three thousand Ngultrum. It would be helpful if they deploy at least two machines so that we can get at least two trips a day. It would also help us repay our loans,” said Lhab Tshering, a trucker.
However, according to the officials from the NRDCL’s Sha Branch, additional machines could not be deployed due to a lack of space at the site for vehicles to ply through smoothly. They say vehicles get stuck in the sand making way for traffic congestion.
“Truckers are saying that they are not able to get their required sand. I would say it’s not true. They can get it from here. However, it is useless whether we deploy two, three or four machines as there are no proper places for vehicles to turn. And for that matter, we can deploy one or two machines here and not more than that. It is not that we cannot deploy the machines, we can do that. In the past, we deployed three machines,” said Ugyen Choden, Assistant Marketing of the NRDCL’s Sha Branch.
Today, the NRDCL officials monitor and send around ten trucks at a time to load the sand to avoid such congestion at the loading site.
The office abstracts and delivers sands from 9 AM till 5 PM to about a hundred trucks at the Wangjokha site.
The sand extraction season begins in the first week of November and continues till march.
Changa Dorji, Wangdue Phodrang
Edited by Sonam Pem
