Back to Office Report

Back to office report

As a part of the field monitoring, M&EO accompanied GKMO from Office of the Programme Management (OPM) has visited and joined the (Climate Smart Village) CSV team (ARDC, RLDC, EAs of Kurtoe Gewog and Component Manager (CM) of Agriculture and Livestock from OPM) in Jatshabee village of Kurtoe Gewog under Lhuentse Dzongkhag on 29th November, 2016.

Jatshabee is a small community with 11 HHs located at an altitude of 1550 masl. A farm road is connected to the village to Geog centre with suspension bridge along the Kuri River. The village is now the first pilot CSV of Lhuentse Dzongkhag under CARLEP, identified jointly by the Dzongkhag and Geog Extensions.

As a staple crop, people of Jatshabee grow paddy and maize. They also grow millet and wheat in a subsistence scale. They grow varieties of vegetables but for the self-consumption. They rear local breed of cattle and owns 4 to 10 heads per household in an average range.

Apart from some irrigation issues during the peak season of paddy cultivation, crop damages by wildlife and relative accessibility to market are the biggest challenges for the Jatshabee Community.

As a climate smart village, Jatshabee will be supported with the climate smart technologies like the biogas installation and supplying of indigenous animal breeds as per their willingness. However, the detail plan will be produced by the technical team led by ARDC through Participatory Action Planning. While the CSV initiations for this financial year 2016-17 will be led by ARDC, the replication from the next financial year will be followed-up by Dzongkhag under CARLEP financing.

Findings:

- The Village is idle for the CSV in respect to the environment coverage, water availability, village layout, and harmony among the community but in the broader prospective the representative of households is quite low (11hhs). - Both climatically and geographically, Jarsey rearing is found feasible in the Jatshabee village but people are reluctant because of the bad experiences in the past where none of the jersey they purchased survived. - Farmers reported that electric fencing is very useful in safeguarding the crops. However, there is severe pressure especially from the wild boar. These animals sometime cut off the fencing wire and enters the field. And in some cases, they get entered through the Kuri River where it was not fenced. - There was more female participation in the meeting. (3 male, 8 female). This according to the participants, is because it is the trend that woman takes more participation in social and public gatherings. As such, there is no gender biases. The decisions are jointly taken and the available opportunities are services are also equally availed.

30th November 2016

As per the tentative programme as listed below, we also met with Dzongkhag Sectors heads;

1. Online Progress Report Format (Feedback)

2. Reporting period half yearly based (Jan and July)

3. Hhs data collection (Agri sector)

4. Tagging house no. (Format)

5. AWP&B 2017-2018 FY (Prepare a draft) January 2017

6. Midterm review (Status updates) 2016-2017 FY

7. Any Other Business

The visit was made from office to office and found out that the Dzongkhag Agriculture Officer (DAO) is out of station to Gelephu. Meeting with Dzongkhag Livestock Officer (DLO) reached to following discussions; - It was noticed that the DLO has not received the goggle sheet progress Report format which was made available a months ago from OPM. Therefore, she couldn’t provide us the feedback on this subject, however requested DLO to get back once she received the format later.

- In order to avoid the double counting of the project beneficiaries, every implementing agency is asked to tag the house number along with beneficiary list. DLO suggested to modify the prescribed format so to capture wider information.

- Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWP&B) for 2017-2018 is scheduled in the month of November 2016, but due to delay in Value Chain studies, it is postponed to be in the month of January 2017. However, all agencies are asked to prepare the draft based on the cost tab and previous year format before we do the finalization.

- We had some time to discuss and review the status of the on-going activities related to livestock of Lhuntse Dzongkhag (The 25 cattle shed constructions are under way and plan to procure 20 heads of cattle after completion of shed, it will follow by farmers training on diary management, Fodder inputs supply will be completing by end of December 2016, local pullet supply has not done, since it was difficult to find good source of pullet, Dairy awareness is another activity to be under taken by the Livestock sector of Lhuntse).

Meeting with ADAO at Autsho; We were informed that land development programme is core activity to undertaken under CARLEP. Other activities such as farmers training, crop production inputs supply, SLMP techniques are already under implementation. I addition, ADAO updated us that the Autsho fallow land to upgrade commercial farming with all necessary inputs is one of the upcoming activit. He added that the site is in the pipeline level and it will be soon get started. With the approval from the communities and Dzongkhag Administration water source is identified, where it was the bottlenecked to take off the programme there. Meeting with Mr. Karma Wangdi, Kidu Officer of Lhuntse-The main discussion was on the Royal Kidu beneficiary of Lhuntse Dzongkhag. Mr. Karma stated that there are more the fifty kidu beneficiary till date, some of whom are physically disadvantaged destitute. Most of them are also associated with broken family and single living households. He agreed to share the list of beneficiary along with nature of disadvantages within few weeks time.

Meeting points with substation ARDC, Lingmethang

-To discuss the following matters regarding the upcoming KM and GM workshop, Scheduled from 12th of December, we met with Mr. Thinley Wangdi, the officer in-charge of ARDSC, Ligmethang.

- Room allocation (participants, ladies room)

- Mess facilities (Cooking pots (1 tea pot, rice pot, curry pot 2 nos, Plates and mugs)

- Cooks (who/ how many/ dish washer etc)

- Meeting hall (Chairs, other facilities)

- Hot water bath (As proposed by PD- ARDC, wengkhar)

- Kitchen (fuel, gas/rice cooker/water boiler/ coffee etc)

- Other facilities (Water, printing and e-net)

And the discussion happened that the ladies participants can occupy the top floor of the hostel where ground floor can accommodate all the male participants.They have all the necessary cooking facilities in place, including pots, plates, cups and spoons (Cooking utensils). Mr. Thinley agreed to arrange for 3 cooks and one dish washer long with all the necessary arrangement for the entire write shop duration.

OPM, Wengkhar will have to arrange all the procurement items and fuel wood, preferably from the saw mill, Mongar. It was agreed that fuel wood for the hot bath have to sources later date and deploy our own cars to get transported.

The meeting hall has the projectors in place. The WIFI will be connected on prepaid mode. The printing facilities and the other misselinous stuffs will have to arrange by OPM.