On motorist awareness, sexual harassment, stray dog menace and ACC investigation of Loden Foundation

Speed breakers and awareness on zebra crossing needed in Kanglung This is to express my concern over the growing number of pedestrian and vehicles plying in Kanglung. There are paths along the road for the pedestrians. I am thankful to traffic police for monitoring the traffic especially during events like the chancellor’s cup. The problem is, some drivers are speeding in the absence of traffic police and many more do not adhere to the zebra crossing rules. This is a concern for pedestrians and is becoming extremely dangerous especially for the students. Places with zebra crossing such as Kanglung primary school, Kanglung Shedra, way to Dantak area but most drivers are reluctant to comply with the traffic rules. There are also cases where some students were nearly hit by car. Many people also have to use the main road to […]

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Water shortage, dog bites, alternate roofing suggestions and Dzongkha spellings

Water shortage – whose responsibility? I express my appreciation to Kuensel for covering many stories on the acute shortage of drinking and irrigation water all over the country. But is the government paying enough attention? I am frustrated that the 12th Plan gives more attention to building helipads in each Gewog than improving drinking and irrigation water. The helicopter services may be required once or twice or not at all during the entire year but we need clean and safe drinking water every day if we are to care for our health and hygiene. We need irrigation water all the year round if we want our rural folks to grow sufficient food to feed ourselves. Why is it so difficult to understand and prioritise our needs? I wish Thimphu Thromdue can reduce drinking water supply to the ministerial enclave to […]

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Parking space at JDWNRH, health worker grievance and RAA clarifies on statutory auditing

Lack of parking space at JDWNRH I on behalf of general public and as a concerned citizen, would like to draw your kind attention regarding the above subject. Our city lack parking space due to booming constructions and rapid growth of vehicle population. The government and relevant stakeholders are trying their best to de-congest the city roads by building multi-storey vehicle parks and mandatory basement car parking for private owned buildings. It is just opposite for JDWNRH management. Recently, the hospital administration awarded the contract to private firm to convert its underground parking lot with capacity to accommodate 120 cars to gym and fitness, recreation, restaurant, coffee stall and garment shop, which will be leased out . Yes, it will fetch good revenue comparing to fees collected from vehicles. But money is not everything. Public convenience needs to be given […]

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JDWNRH clarifies on hospital security and safety

A series of recent articles and editorials about incidents occurring at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH) have raised legitimate concerns about patient safety and quality of care in the nation’s largest hospital. We would like to share our ongoing efforts to improve care for our patients. We have already installed CCTV cameras installed in all strategic places in the hospital premises and in the BBS programme we have mentioned that more CCTV cameras would be installed to strengthen surveillance. The information on CCTV installation being held up due to budgetary constraint is wrong because we have an approved budget of Nu 2 million to set up control room and networking for CCTV for the FY 2017-2018. We have installed a total of 72 CCTV cameras in strategic locations in the hospital premises since September 2017. The statement, […]

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Advice on waste and environment preservation by tourists who visited Bhutan

Some views on a recent trip to Bhutan As first-time tourists in Bhutan, what has impressed us is that the government has had the foresight to preserve the pristine forests, heritage sites and magnificent mountain ranges. Prior to our arrival in Bhutan, we were under the impression that the government has limited external tourism numbers to ensure the sustainability of environment and natural resources. The reality is that many of the access paths to your amazing tourist sites are clogged with litter. It appears that the closer one gets to human habitation, the greater the litter. There have been a number of walks and hikes through villages and your cities that have been quite distressing due to the amount of litter. The impact on your environment is obvious. The problem of litter, waste handling and recycling is complex and not […]

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Overseas jobs, teachers day celebration, media literacy and pedestrian safety

Migrant workers rehabilitation programme More than 2,000 overseas jobs were on offer last week at a job fair in Thimphu. Employers from countries, including Kuwait, India and Japan, had come to look for jobseekers in the country. This means that Bhutan is emerging as a supplier of labour force for countries in the Middle East, India, and other countries around the world. Accordingly, it has become important for the labour ministry to conduct awareness programmes about the welfare of the migrant workers for youths in the country. It is important for youths to have adequate knowledge about benefits and working conditions before they decide to go for foreign employment. Embassies in the employer country should also provide such awareness programmes upon their arrival in the employer country. The migrant workers should be informed about their welfare, services, and perks provided […]

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Of sports infrastructures, eve-teasing and useless mobile apps, noise pollution and traffic congestion

Make sports infrastructure accessible to all We woke up to a bad news last Sunday. A group of boys were involved in a fight and one of them was stabbed. We learnt that one of the youth involved was my relative and it was breaking his parent’s hearts. As a relative and a father of a son myself, I was curious to know what made them do this. To this, he answered, “we were drunk.” I suggested that there are many avenues where he could engage himself like sports instead of going to bars. He said he likes football but football fields are only for the rich. He and his friends are university graduates without jobs, so they cannot afford to pay for the football field. He makes sense. Nu. 4,000 or 5,000 a match is way beyond their means. […]

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Of blue-color jobs, new NC members and the road and sewerage conditions in Thimphu

Make blue color jobs attractive Creation of employment is becoming a major challenge for the country. Some say that our youth are not taking up available jobs although jobs are aplenty, especially in the technical field and the blue color market. However, salaries in the private sector are not attractive in most cases. As a result, a large number of people are traveling aboard for jobs. It is said that the money our youth earn in Japan is not enough to live a comfortable life due to high cost of living there. The government should create more jobs in the country to employee VTI graduates. It should ensure justifiable wages and social security to make jobs at home attractive. This would encourage people to look for and take up jobs at home. Tashi Thimphu (Published on May 7, 2018) Time […]

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Encourage multi-storied building in urban areas

Being the capital, every one wishes to have properties in Thimphu. I feel that the government with the help of the Thromde, instead of restricting construction to a single storied house in the municipal areas could encourage residents to construct multi-storied buildings in the city so that we accommodate more people on a minimum acre of land. This could also aid in economical distribution of services like water and electricity and bring down the real estate cost. Some of the advantages could be: • The save space and accommodate more residents as compared to shorter buildings • Higher floors are relatively more airy & receive more sunlight • More economical One of the benefits of building a multi-storey home is that the living space is almost doubled depending on the number of floors when compared to a single storey home […]

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