200,000 jobs on cards
The new DPT government, celebrating its super majority in the government and the first elected establishment, even after two years in helm, continues to fool the national populace with assumptive projections. The latest of the fooling tool is that the country will create additional 200,000 jobs.
The high hopes for earning and creating jobs in the planned large hydropower plants built under the sponsorship of Indian companies. The plants are expected to produce not only 11,000 MW of power but also about 64,000 jobs.
Business Bhutan in its latest issue reported that the country will create that number of jobs in the hydropower sector by this decade end. That will be far beyond jobless population and might invite situation to hire laborers from foreign countries.
The DPT chief Thinley in his interaction with media after ruling the country for 730 days said that the government provided ironic pictures of the job creation — to some extent utopian idea, unachievable target, over ambitious projections.
According to PM, the country will generate 75,000 jobs just in the tourism sector and another 60,000 in the upcoming education city. This is addition to the projection made by Water and Power Consultancy Services, an Indian government firm studying hydropower possibilities in Bhutan, which said hydropower sector in the country will give job to 64,000 people when 10 mega plants are completed.
But are there enough Bhutanese to get absorbed in these sectors, with adequate qualification and qualities? Not much. To rescue the situation, India experts will shortly visit Bhutan to upgrade existing vocational training institutes (VTIs) and then include in their curriculum hydropower requirements contents.
Studying one hydropower project is enough to verify if government projections are correct. To achieve the target, the Tala project must have created job at an average of 6400, which hasn’t. The rivers are already drying up and fears are up whether Bhutanese rivers can meet the projection target even.
But creation of some 200,000 jobs is not a big deal. In a decade, even normal economy can generate these opportunities. To meet the commitments, the government must ably create similar number of job opportunities in other than these three sectors. The way pictures are presented today for mass consumption are attempts to create public favor towards the DPT.