The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Bhutan Transparency Initiative (BTI) presented and discussed the preliminary findings on the citizens’ perception on the 11th Five Year Plan on Friday. The conference was attended by some of the National Council members, officials from financial institutions, members from Civil Society Organizations and other relevant agencies.
With the shift of 11th Five Year Plan more towards Results Based Planning (RBP) framework with articulated outputs and outcomes, BTI initiated a survey to document the citizens’ perception on the 11th Five Year Plan and also to encourage the engagement of every citizen in decision making.
BTI’s finding of citizens’ perception on the 11th five year plan was based on the survey undertaken in Paro, Zhemgang, and Lhuntse under the professional guidance of Mr. Naimur Rahman, who is an international consultant. A total of 793 houses were surveyed from the three Dzongkhags.
The three Dzongkhags were chosen for the survey for their geographic locations (West, North and South) and due to their rankings in the GHN Index 2010.
Some of the sectors covered in the CRC included Health, Sanitation, drinking water, Education, Agriculture, Environment, Culture, and Government to Citizen (G2C) service delivery.
Some of the findings from the survey showed that availing ambulance, high expenditure on buying medicines from the pharmacy shops, and expensive in-country transportation cost as issues.
The major finding from the survey is on the efficiency of the G2C services, which Mr. Naimur Rahman feels need to be revisited because many of the respondents were unsatisfied with the process of delivering the services.
The survey found that the wait to avail the services was slow and thus took very long time to complete an application. Out of the many of the G2C services, it was found that there was no application submitted for around 20 services. Slow internet connectivity was pronounced as the greatest hindrance in delivering the services to the public efficiently.
The report of the findings from the survey is expected to be out by March.
“We approached the government and I must say that the government was very forthcoming. They encouraged us to conduct such independent surveys. The Gross National Happiness Center was also very supportive in provisioning the materials which were not on public domain but which were required for the survey,” said Aum Pema Lhamo, the Executive Director of BTI.
