At 138 pages the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Manifesto was by far the longest and most detailed of the five competing political parties. By comparison the Opposition Bhutan Tendrel Party (BTP) which had the shortest manifesto, had only 63 pages. At one level the PDP manifesto arose from experience in …

One of the current government’s most popular and discussed pledges is the offer to give Nu 10,000 per month for the birth of a third child till the age of three. A study done on the matter based its projection on the number of third child born in the last …

The current government had made a pledge to increase the Rural Life Insurance (RLI) sum from Nu 30,000 to Nu 150,000. However, this means that the insurance premium to be paid will increase from the current Nu 121.15 million (mn) a year to Nu 652.36 mn a year, which is …

Government Secretaries until recently have had a fixed tenure of five years after which they retire, provided they don’t retire earlier due to the retirement age. However, a closer look at the Bhutan Civil Service Rules (BCSR) 2023 released in December 2023 by the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) shows …

Recently the Bangladesh Embassy issued a press release on the visit of the Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen. Buried in the press release was an important line which said that the Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh raised the issue of Sustainable Development Fees (SDF) for tourists and requested to reduce …

A slew of recommendations and reports have been submitted to the government on increasing tourist numbers from both the Ministry of Industry Commerce and Employment and other stakeholders. A senior official, on the condition of anonymity said, the government will study all the recommendations carefully but is unlikely to arbitrarily …

Chamgang Jail was meant to house around 400 to 500 prisoners in five blocks, but today it has around 700 plus prisoners and over half of them at around 370 are in due to drug cases. The Bhutanese talked to three such prisoners to gain an understanding of what led …

Stringent monitoring to ensure payback of loans For some time now there has been a lot of speculation on what the Nu 15 billion (bn) Economic Stimulus Program will be used for. The only thing known was that it would be used to stimulate the economy. The Prime Minister Dasho …

Decision on Saturday expected to come within next two weeks In the first week of March 2024 there was a lot of controversy as it was revealed that a Committee set up to study the Saturday off pledge had recommended not to give Saturday off. The government at the time …

For a while now teachers have not been happy with the bell curve resulting from the assessment or moderation of the Individual Work Plan (IWP) whereby a few have to be placed in the Partly Meeting Expectations (PME) category. Teachers felt particularly aggrieved with the PME in the bell curve …