The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Good decision from the cabinet. What i heard was that the project was a threat against national security by selling it to foreigners. Dawa
So much for the Education City Act & all the hullabaloo! Alternative: revert back to REC’s model of Education City – with social interest, not commercial interest.
Sanja
Opposition party(previous government) & land commission should have looked into the legality of the land that time only. Now that in¬frastructures has come up, closing of the project would only impact potential investors investing in future.
Doubt
As for the cabinet’s decision to shelve the education project, there has to be a far stronger reason than just the legal issue of the land, like say the feasibility of the project etc, otherwise critics will say that the present government was only undoing what the DPT govern¬ment had begun.
Good
Were people in the NLC during DPT tenure were all dumb, deaf, and blind. Aren’t we all the custodians of our country? What a waste! What kind of think tankers we have in our country. Can’t think of it! Shuwachen
Well done to the Secretary, NLC for being principled enough to bring the issue to the fore and not cover it up even at the expense of antagonizing the powerful politicians. We, Bhutanese in general have no lobby groups (environment or otherwise) and such help from bureaucrats are needed to defend the vulnerable sections of our society in this democratic age.
We claim to be a GNH country and why should it be difficult to at-tract FDIs with proper accountability and transparency.
Doro
All our decision makers and politicians should be mindful of our size and never over do it. Most importantly we ought to be careful with FDI.
Lama
Benefits of Education City are revenue share to the government, 50 acres of developed and plotted land to government for local institu¬tions with utility facilities, Nu. 10 million concession fee per year to be increased by 5% every 5 years, Nu. 30 million project develop
ment fee, Rs. 22 billion FDI investment in 15 yrs, Education City itself gets transferred back to government for free after the conces¬sion period, modernize the higher education sector in Bhutan, job opportunity, retain local students (7000 students) in Bhutan and not have Rupee outflow, strengthen research capacity and educa¬tion quality in Bhutan, set up model integrated township in Bhutan, local community development, and an opportunity to diversify from hydropower.
Demo Crazy
I agree with the concerns raised . 1. Have we become greedy to put our sovereignty at stake by leasing land out to non Bhutanese for 90 years? 2. According to recent report, the major portion of the land was for constructing luxury villas!.
- The fact that the previous govt. bulldozed this project through by passing a separate act itself was questionable. If one paid attention while driving toward Khasadrapchu, look ahead on the top of the mountain and one can notice a sort of a building coming out. It is a project of two minister’s relatives for furniture supply.
- Even with 30% land used for education, imagine the huge number of non-Bhutanese students and employees coming in. Consider cul-tural dilution, affects on citizenship issues, crimes so on and so forth. Let us learn lessons from what happened to Sikkim and Tibet.