The civil servants will receive their leave travel concession (LTC) by next month if the pandemic situation doesn’t deteriorate. This was shared by the Prime Minister during the question-answer session in the National Council yesterday. Lyonchhen said the government will be receiving around Nu 2bn from Mangdechhu hydropower. The Finance Ministry deferred the LTC for civil servants towards the end of this year after facing a deficit of around Nu 3bn in the recurrent budget because of the pandemic.
The Prime Minister said with the revenue from the Mangdechhu hydropower, the government will also be able to give civil servants their full travel allowance. Owing to a deficit in the recurrent budget, the Finance Ministry had issued a notification in September asking all government agencies to adhere to uniform travel allowance of Nu 500 a day irrespective of position level.
“We will have some Nu 2bn from Mangdechhu hydropower this year which can make up for the deficit in the recurrent budget as per Finance Ministry. Now if that is enough then we can give the usual travel allowance and can also give LTC by January next year. As per the Finance Ministry’s calculations, there won’t be any issue until May next year. But this is not final. In case we have another lockdown, there will be a deficit again. And it means the travel allowance will reduce again or may not get at all. It will all depend on what situation the country is in,” Lyonchhen said.
The Prime Minister also informed the House that with major planned developmental activities on halt amid the pandemic, the government is planning to lay a base course for farm roads across the country with the surplus capital budget.
“While we are receiving the capital budget as usual we are not able to carry out developmental activities and invest the capital budget as usual. So we are saving the remaining capital budget to carry out a base course for farm roads across the country. We have resources such as sand and stone in our country and it doesn’t require a lot of experts to do that. We have around 12,000 kilometres farm road network in 201 gewogs across the country. MoWHS estimated that base course for a kilometre of farm road would cost Nu 1.6 M. So we have carried out the first phase with a surplus capital budget of around Nu 2.5bn,” added Lyonchhen.
Lyonchhen said the country is receiving the capital budget from its developing partners including India, European Union and Japan amid the pandemic.
Phub Gyem & Samten
