On 21st October, 2020 the Rotary Club of Thimphu finally managed to start the implementation of our US$ 59,000.00 bio-medical waste incinerator project – after an incredible and uncalled-for delay of over six months. But on hindsight, I believe that this project was ill-fated from the start.
This project was originally conceived on 4th June, 2019 as a project for the construction of a total of 139 toilets: 59 in Yusipang, 58 in Chhukha, 12 in Sarpang and 10 in Samtse. Unfortunately, the Rotary Foundation (TRF) disallowed this project on the ground that it was a multi-location based project, which the Foundation did not support.
We then decided to convert the project to one for supply of Operation Theatre (OT) equipment, to the JDWNRH. We appointed our Club Member Rtn. Dr. Phub Tshering to be the Chair of the project, to oversee the project realization and implementation. Yet again, unfortunately, while the Global Grant Application process was in progress, on 6th of March, 2020, an active COVID-19 case was reported inside the country, and our Project Chair was called away to help with the virus containment efforts. The project went into suspension – for want of a Chair to oversee the project.
The Club then decided that we would convert the project to that of a project to support the Ministry of Health - in the supply and installation of bio-medical incinerators, to assist them to safely process COVID-19 waste. With the concurrence of our international partners in Taiwan, we rewrote the GG Application for that of medical incinerators and submitted to the TRF for their consideration. Within three days of our submission of the GG Application, the TRF notified us, on 11th May, 2020, that our project amounting to US$ 59,000.00 has been approved!
From 11th May to 29th October, 2020, the well-intentioned project remained stalled for all the strangest of reasons – for over six months!
For me personally, in trying to fulfill the role of the Club Secretary and Community Services Director rolled into one, the journey has been most harrowing. An act of charity and giving does not have to be this painful and frustrating. And yet, I realize that some of us cannot give up – just because some self-serving people fail the nation in this hour of need for hard work and self-sacrifice.
Thirty-five years or so back I was having a heated argument with my late boss - for assigning me to do a job that could have resulted in my death. He responded with something that greatly infuriated me, then. He told me:
“Yeshey Dorji, do not expect me to give you a gold medal for doing your job”.
Many decades later, during my moments of despair and helplessness in the face of so much callousness around me, I take solace from this brutally hard-hitting statement of my late boss who was wise beyond his time. It conveys to me the message that I cannot claim to be any better than all those callous persons – if I fail to rise above them and give my very best to succeed in the responsibilities that I have been charged with. All the obstacles in my path is inconsequential - what finally matters is that I have not allowed the failures of others to be the cause for my own failure. It is for this reason that I have been the Club Secretary for the past five years. If conditions were ideal and if there were no obstacles to overcome, if the roads were paved in gold, they might have as well put a donkey on my chair, and not me.
It is in this light that I empathize with His Majesty the King – He has been all alone at the top. The nature of a King's job is such that he has to keep on doggedly - in spite of anything and everything - because He knows that He is the absolute LAST STOP. Thus the option of giving up is a luxury that is unavailable to Him.
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