Berdoongma village of Thrimshing Gewog in Trashigang is connected by a farm road. But the 12.6 kilometre road has not been of much benefit to the villagers owing to its poor condition.
It’s hard for small cars to use the road even in winter. In summer, even four-wheel drives find it difficult to handle the road. Its worse during monsoon as the road often gets blocked.
“We cannot carry much load,” said Dorji, said a driver from Berdoongma. “A vehicle with a load capacity of one ton can only carry 500 kilograms and we can’t even recover the fuel price.”
“We are not able to take our farm produce to the market for sale because the road is bad,” said Ugyen Thinley, a villager.
“While we are grateful to the government for building the road, it has hardly benefited us,” said Kencho, another villager. “Forget about cars, it’s risky for the people to walk. We have to watch out for falling boulders.”
“We don’t have cars and it’s hard to hire one because no driver wants to come to our village because of the road condition,” said Samten.
The villagers said the situation turns grimmer in times of illness and other emergencies.
Thrimshing Gup Ngawang Dorji said the tough geographical terrain makes it hard to maintain the road. He said the farm road would be widened once the village is connected with the gewog.