Residents of Tseza Gewog and Dagana Town are waiting for the construction of a nearby fuel station to take off soon. The State Trading Corporation of Bhutan Limited and Dagana District Administration had identified a site last August. However, there are no signs of construction works happening yet.
The identified site for the construction of a fuel depot is a government land located on the way to the Tseza Gewog administration office.
It is just a few minutes drives away from Dagana Town. The site covers about 40 decimal of land where all the required machines and facilities for a fuel station would be set up.
At the moment, the people of Tseza Gewog and Dagana town travel almost 50 kilometres to Dagapela to refuel their cars and restock fuel supplies for their farming equipment.
For them, this is often financially taxing and time-consuming. So, they are hoping for a nearby fuel depot to come up soon.
“If STCBL could start fuel depot construction works at the earliest it will benefit residents of Dagana town, district officials and people of Tseza Gewog immensely. This is because at the moment we have to travel Dagapela to refuel cars. And this cost us extra money,” said Tseza Gup, Samten Jamtsho.
Others also hope for reaping the benefits.
“People like me who don’t own a car have to hire a vehicle to bring fuel for power tiller. We would be grateful if STCBL could speed up construction works since the site has been already identified,” said Dungchoe, a resident in Dagana town.
“People in my gewog hugely depend on power tillers for farming. But they have to discontinue their work when the tillers run out of fuel. So, they are excited to have learned about the identified site of the fuel depot,” added Ngawang Dorji, Tseza Mangmi.
Updating to BBS news, the STCBL said they are waiting for the National Land Commission to approve the land lease certificate. Once that is through, designing the fuel station and tendering works will begin.
Meanwhile, the district administration is facilitating the STCBL to obtain the certificate. However, due to the dissolution of the second local government last October, the process got delayed.
“The term for second local government ended when we were preparing documents like NOC from the community and forest clearance from Tseza Gewog. We couldn’t continue working until the new local leaders joined the office. However, it won’t take much time now for STCBL to acquire a land certificate from the land commission since everything is in the final stage,” shared Dagana Dzongda, Duba.
The Dzongda had recently reminded the STCBL to start the construction works soon after receiving the land lease certificate. The STCBL too is expecting to begin the work within this year.
Pema Tshewang, Dagana
Edited by Pema Lhaden
