The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Jarey, the remotest gewog under Lhuentse Dzongkhag, celebrated the completion of a 36 kilometers farm road from Gorgan till its gewog centre (GC) in an inaugural ceremony yesterday.
The ceremony was observed with Chipdrel, hoisting the national flag, Marchang ceremony and included cultural programs like singing and dancing.
The inaugural ceremony was conducted in the presence of Drangpon, police officials, Gups, along with some 2,200 people to celebrate the day.
The GC road which started construction works since 2009 from Gorgan, 35 kms from Jarey gewog, finally completed this September after four years.
The gewog has about 224 households.
Since 2009 progress was slow on the road and in its early days works progressed to a mere two kms. Later the work was also halted at one point because the river at the place didn’t have a bridge and workers had to wait two months for the river to subside so as to start with the construction. “However the machines were passed through Kurichu bypass,” said the Gewog Administration Officer (GAO) Dorji Tshering.
The Gewog’s Gup Kinzang Minjur said the construction took a long time because of many factors.
After completion of two kms on the road funded by the Bhutan Government, a year was lost since due to lack of budget.
Works continued in the same year from the gewog’s budget from the first two financial years of tenth five year plan. Eventually the budget was approved in October 2010 and about 13 kms of road was completed in the same year.
From 2009-2011, about 28 kms of road was completed in Lungmachhen and later about 12.5 kms was completed in 2011.
Apart from the budget, challenges faced were environmental and geographical factors. In particular, it was to do with Thrimshingla where dumping had to be done carefully.
Gup Kinzang said people are happy with the success of their work and came up with the idea to celebrate the day.
With the inauguration of the farm road in the gewog, so many opportunities are likely to open up for its people. People can now sell their farm produce, earn income and they also purchase farm produce as well.
Other than that it will benefit the people to avail health facilities unlike in the past when they had to carry the sick all the way to BHU which is about 7 to 8 hours walk from the village. Few have even lost their lives on the way.
Now with the farm road, within two hours people can reach for the health facilities.
Now that there is road access, the place also has a chance to reap some benefits through tourism.
The gewog is home to sacred places such as Autsho Lake which could be a tourist attraction.
