Plot allotment in new town set for February
26 January, 2010 - Prime minister
Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley promised landowners in the new Gelephu
municipality that he would discuss the delay in the allotment of plots
and finalise it at the earliest.
The Lyonchhoen was addressing a gathering of residents, civil servants and business people of Gelephu and was emphasizing on the need to improve working habits of the Bhutanese bureaucracy, when he visited the town recently.
The prime minister said few government servants planned their works for the day while a majority walked into offices without a clue as to what they were going to work on and what work they intended to complete by the end of the working hour. This, he said, was true of public servants starting from ministers down to office peons.
The landowner informed the prime minister that he had sold some of his land in other parts of the town to build one in the new township with the hope the government would allot the plots sooner.
“Now I’ve spent all that money,” he said. “By the time plot allocation is finalised, we would have run out of money for construction,” said the resident. A municipal authority official said that since most plots belonged to retired people, they were worried about the rising construction cost.
Gelephu’s local area plan (new township) covering about one square kilometre with about 400 plots on which structures would be limited to three stories, has already been provided with basic infrastructure like electricity, roads, water supply and a proper sewerage system.
Of the 400 plots, about 80 already have structures erected on them, much before the plans of a new township in Gelephu existed.
Meanwhile, Gelephu’s municipal in charge Chophel Dorji said they had completed their work of town planning and submitted the report to higher authorities for endorsement. But for that endorsement, the urban land division’s chief land registrar in Thimphu, Sangay Wangdi, said that concerned authorities in Thimphu were awaiting the land commission’s reports.
He said that they were concerned with proper land registration, which had to be established for both urban and rural lands in Gelephu. “It’s a normal process, after government declares a town, to study how much forest land would be used, or see if they are in accordance to the land act,” he said.
He added that this was necessary to define the taxation of a land because most private registered lands in the country were identified as rural and once government declared a town, it became urban. “So before government declares that change from rural to urban settlement, they have to await our endorsement,” he said.
The flaw, he said was in the system where planning came first and then the policies when it should have been the other way round. Sangay Wangdi said the plots would be ready for people to take over some next month.
