Just yesterday evening, sitting at the round table of my favorite restaurant Paday Bistro, I was seeking help from two friends - Lhakpa and Gyamtsho - to help me stock up on some barrels of kerosene fuel. Also to let me know where I could buy kerosene stoves.
One of them asked: “What for?”
I responded: “I get the sense that the freeze this winter could likely be more pronounced than in all of the earlier winters”.
“Why would you say so?”
“I fear we may suffer more acute shortage of electricity for lighting and heating - caused by quantum jump in domestic consumption of electricity”.
“You fear so? Then get a wood-fired Bukhari - we are a country with abundant wood”.
“But the place where I live does not provide for the use of Bukharis. In any event, managing Bukhari wood is a real pain in the nether regions, in addition to being environmentally destructive".
“Think of something else then - kerosene stoves could choke you to death with its noxious fumes”.
“Is there a difference - being dead with kerosene fumes or being frozen to death?”
It appears that my fears may be unfounded. This morning the KUENSEL carried the following report, which would indicate that the government is mindful of the impending problem. They hope to solve the problem, yet again, by importing electricity from India - this time even more than in the past - resulting in an additional import bill of Nu.6.00 billion:
Is it possible that we might consider curtailing consumption - instead of increasing imports?
I have been saying this for the past one and half decades: Why is it that a country that claims to be a net exporter of “clean” electricity has to import electricity from another country? Why do citizen’s need to line up for hours at the fuel kiosks - to purchase imported energy to cook and heat homes?
Why do we have to build hydropower projects that never get done - instead of building a damn dam across the Wangchhu - to store water during the summer months when there is excess water, to feed the idling projects downstream in Tala and Chhukha, during the winter months?
I have proposed this ten years back - read at the following:
What the dang hell is wrong with the Bhutanese people? Are we total dullards or what?
I suppose - like I jokingly told few friends a week or two back, that the government’s answer to the simplest of the citizen’s questions would be:
“Choe gii haa mego se”
“It is beyond your understanding”.
Choe gi haha mego siiiiiii……..
ReplyDeleteLOL ....
DeleteThis has got new ones. If you can,t afford fuel, walk. Boleros should not tread where Prados go. I drove down the Punatsangchu river a month ago and was hit by a sense of gloom passing through the dam site of the PHPA1. While millions are going down the drain waiting for the indecision to build a dam or barrage, there is no public accountability and disclosure. The government of the day is as if this issue is beyond their mandate. Will somebody address this? Either complete the project or just shut it. Fuck the millions invested already. After all the long term environmental benefits might pay off for what we are throwing into this bottomless pit. Wake up Bhutan!
ReplyDeleteLegacy of the political party and those protagonists who started it and the others who later shunned it at heavy cumulative cost to Bhutan ...
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