Although the three chiwogs of Maedtsho Gewog in Lhuentse – Oong-gar, Zhongmaed and Gortshom Tshangthrom-Maed were connected with a farm road in 2012, the farmers have not been able to make the most of it. They still need a farm road that will connect the farmland with the villages. Currently, people struggle, walking for hours carrying farm produce on their backs.
Like elsewhere in the country, farmers in the three chiwogs are busy harvesting paddy. Around 75 households have more than 600 acres of wetland and dryland in the Tsamphu, Dung and Lulibee areas. These areas are about seven kilometres from the chiwogs.
It is tiresome for the farmers here, especially during the harvest season, to walk uphill with grains on their backs. It takes more than three hours to reach the farm road which connects the chiwogs. Without a farm road on their farmland, ponies are the main means of transportation.
“Without farm road connectivity, it is difficult for us to carry paddy from the farm to our house due to labour shortage. We have to hire a horse to transport it. Having a farm road will solve our problem,” said Thinley Lhamo, a farmer.
“Like most of the farmers, we are also using power tillers to plough the field. But due to the lack of a farm road, we are facing a lot of difficulties in carrying the machine to the farm,” said Thinley, another farmer.
Some farmers said a survey to construct a farm road was also conducted sometime in 2017 which remained on paper only.
“We don’t have that much money to construct a farm road on our own. We are facing difficulty as we have school-going children. The local leaders promised to construct the farm road during the election campaign and a survey was also conducted to construct the farm road. But the local leaders had dropped it from the 12th Five Year Plan due to a lack of budget,” said Sitharla, a farmer.
“The farmers have raised their concern to the former Agriculture Minister. With the instruction from the minister, the gewog officials and the public surveyed to construct the farm road. While doing the survey, the length of the farm road was about 7.5 kilometres but we don’t know how it was dropped later,” said Kuenzang Tshering, Gortshom Tshangthrom-Maed Tshogpa. Maedtsho Gup said that the construction of the farm road could not be materialized due to budget constraints.
“When the gewog administration was planning the 12th Five Year Plan, the public proposed a farm road at Tsamphu farm. But while prioritising the plans, we could not include it in the 12th Five Year Plan. The estimated cost came to around Nu 500 M but the gewog received just Nu 400 M in the 12th Five Year Plan. Even if we allocate the entire 12th five-year budget, it is not adequate to construct a farm road. Later, we also proposed in the Dzongkhag Tshogdu but the farm road construction could not be prioritised due to the budget constraint in the district administration as well,” said Gembo, Maedtsho Gup.
Owing to the lack of farm roads, some of the farmers started leaving the land fallow. Others might as well follow suit if the plans to construct the farm road do not materialise soon.
Sonam Tshering, Lhuentse
Edited by Tshering Zam
