The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Gelephu municipality means to address in all earnest, the complaints lodged by residents and presently the office and its officials are in set-mode to take action.
For starters, works have been initiated based on the water problems which is a constant source for complaints by residents.
For this issue the municipality has constructed a new distribution of network in the water supply for house connection within the core area. As part of this an upgradation of old pipelines into new ones are high on the agenda.
Town residents of Gelephu have frequently complained on the leakages of water, spill-over and their broken water taps in respective houses, say the Gelephu municipality.
The municipality has taken steps ahead to reduce the complaints from the public by maintaining a complaint register of each household.
As per the Executive Engineer James Lingden under the Thromde, “We all do this for the consumer’s satisfaction because every month they pay their water bills and I think we municipality ought to service their needs with proper satisfaction.”
However this type of a crisis arises most in the dry seasons as everyone is well aware of the maladies associated with the season when the water level goes down and people don’t get access to sufficient water.
“For the supply of water in the town we use pump systems and when there is low water level we do not have the excess water and as a result residents do not get proper water supply on time,” said Executive Engineer James Lingden.
An engineer under the engineering servicing division (ESD) Karma Tenzin, said “After looking at these difficulties faced by the residents we started to maintain a complaint register so that whenever we get a complaint we send our plumbers to work it out. And now I feel that it has been a day-to-day job for us to serve our consumers.”
Talking to some of the Gelephu town residents, Tashi Choden said “past few months we experienced an erratic and a most tiresome period with the water supply, like fetching water from the river every day.”
Things have however been on the up and running for a while now.
“Now we are receiving the water on time and it is 24 hours a day,” said Tashi Choden.
Rinzin, a hotelier said “With the problem of low water supply we face many other problems, especially at times when we receive more customers and we have no other way to deal with such situations in the absence of a consistent water supply. Now with the new water distribution I think it will work out far better.”
Sonam Wangmo/ Thimphu
