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”.