Most of the farmers of Thang-Rong in Monggar could not sell their farm produce in the market due to roadblocks along the farm roads. Continuous rain last month triggered landslides and caused several roadblocks in all the five chiwogs in Thangrong gewog.
The five km long farm road that connects gewog center with Ngaru-Pongtang chiwog in Thang-Rong Gewog has been blocked since last month. As a result, farmers of the chiwog were worried that mangoes, the main source of income for them, are getting rotten since they could not transport it to the local market. Some farmers earned about Nu 40,000 from selling mangoes last year.
“We are facing lots of trouble since the farm road in our chiwog got damaged by the recent monsoon. We have mangoes to be sold in the market but we could not transport it due to the roadblocks. We heard that Gup and Dzongkhag are soon going to clear the debris, so we are quite happy now,” said Sonam Nima, from Ngaru-Pongtang chiwog in Thang-Rong Gewog.
“It’s the peak season of mango and our biggest concern is that we may not be able to take it to the market,” Jangchub, from the same village, added.
“We are disheartened as all the farm roads got damaged. So we may not be able to sell our farm produce in the market now,” Sherub Tenzin, also from the same village shared.
Some farmers were concerned about the mode of transport if someone falls sick.
“As all the farm roads got blocked, we are worried that if any person falls sick, it will be very difficult to get proper treatments on time. We would be thankful if the road is cleared soon,” said Dorji Tenzin, from the same chiwog.
Similarly, farmers of the other four chiwogs could not sell potatoes, maize and other farm produce in the market due to lack of road connectivity.
Thangrong Gup Changa says that gewog managed to maintain and clear the minor roadblocks but it doesn’t have the capacity to restore the major damages until the department of disaster management supports them with financial assistance.
“When engineers from Dzongkhag came here to do damage assessment, the estimate comes over Nu 17 M. And the gewog administration is so concerned about it. We don’t have such huge amount in the gewog to carry the maintenance work of farm roads. However, hopefully, the department of disaster management would support us in clearing the farm roads. We didn’t expect such catastrophe in the gewog and we never experienced it before as well. So we are concerned about the budget,” Changa, the gup of Thang-Rong said.
Apart from road and crop damages, few houses were also damaged in the gewog. The gewog administration has assessed the extent of damages and submitted the report to Dzongkhag administration.
