The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Response to Expired drugs prescribed to patients by MoH
How can expired drugs be used? It’s dangerous and what is the guarantee of the tests. I think first Doctor’s kids must be given the drugs and then to the patients. Are the doctors sure about its usage after its expiry? Bhutanese hospitals are fast becoming like private Indian hospitals now. We can’t fully trust our MoH now. Next time it could be you or me in the hospital.
By Messi
This is a nice job done by the Bhutanese. DRA must do something about it as it is dangerous.
By Goodjob
Response to “The government is being viewed as autocratic, intolerant and vindictive”
Phub Wangdi has in a nut shell said all what quite a few of us believe to be the truth but can’t express the way he did. He has been following the events at home carefully and has put in proper perspective the strange ways of our first democratically elected leaders. It is certainly food for thought and our leaders ought to read it as a sign of what thinking people are thinking. It would be prudent and wise to take heed and learn from such remarks and not condemn it as biased or anti DPT. After all, the future of our country is more important than empty loyalty to a Party.
By USA
A very well written article. It is indeed worrying and sad for the people and the country and the first democratically elected government has been doing everything but uphold democratic principles.
By Nidup
This guy is a big joke who has been reading too much of the ‘Bhutanese’ lately and has to be ignored. Absolutely no merit in what he writes simply because his views are as myopic as it can get. The answer to whether the DPT government has been good or bad will be decided at the ballot box in 2013, I am sure that question will be answered decisively either way, come April/May of 2013.To the author of this piece, my advice would be to better concentrate on his studies instead of trying to decipher what the government is doing.
By Good
The only defense the DPT has is to say truth speakers are biased.
Biased
Response to 11th Plan needs to create 140,000 jobs
MOLHR policy is to drag every mule kicking and screaming to the water at great national expense. Ultimately, you can’t make the mules drink that water. Expensive training is no substitute to having an attitude to work. Don’t waste scarce resources on people unless they come half way. Why don’t you first establish that ‘half way’ point before giving training?
By Bhutanman
I think it is time now that the DRA should make these drugs available in the market, so that people have choice to purchase it when MoH cannot supply it free before expiry date. The time has come now for people to realize and share some expenses on their iwn health.
Ya it is very very good job done by the Bhutanese family. I also can’t trust upon the doctors if they are issuing the things that are expiry to the patients.
Govt . should look after the matters and should solve the probs….
Dear editor,
In the article in The Bhutanese of 1 November 2012 on Bhutan breaching 700,000 inhabitants, it is stated that the agricultural area of Bhutan is only 2.93%. It indicates that this is a better estimate than the original figure of 7.85% due to better measurement technology. The 7.85% was the figure produced in 1994 by the Danida-funded Land Use Planning Project which worked with the Land Use Planning Section of the PPD of the Ministry of Agriculture. The original methodology may not have been perfect and only a small team of staff produced the 81 land use maps for the whole of Bhutan in a couple of years. However, technology was not so bad that the project would come up with a value so far from the truth. Surely, at a scale of 1:50,000 there are always inclusions of non-arable areas in the areas classified as agricultural land, but at the same time small areas of isolated farmland get classified in other land use classes. Discussions about the reliability of the land use maps mostly concerned wrong classification of forest types. Agricultural areas could be fairly accurately distinguished from other land uses. I would guess that the original figure differed not more than 10% from the actual figure at that time (images used were mostly from 1989).
The main reason for the reduction in the agricultural land area is that tseri cultivation has been abandoned. I believe that roughly half of the original agricultural land was classified as tseri. Other reasons are the extension of urban and rural settlement areas, often into agricultural land, and the abandoning of marginal agricultural land which may be happening due the rural urban migration.
The question is not if Bhutan can produce enough food for it growing population. It cannot and as agricultural mechanisation progresses even more marginal agricultural land will be abandoned. The question about a higher or lower population growth for Bhutan is more related to its capacity to create jobs, not only for the normal growth in population, but also for the increasing numbers of rural-urban migrants. With the present job creation problems a lower population growth rate appears advisable. Another question is if, with so little good agricultural land available, extension of settlements into prime agricultural land should be more vigorously discouraged.
Sincerely,
Piet van der Poel
Former LUPP farming systems specialist (not much involved in the land use mapping)
Present WWF advisor to BWS on preparation of a new management plan
Chorten Kora, Trashi Yangtse