February 7: The Thimphu City Corporation has announced that the present cluster of workshops in Changzamtog will have to be shifted to the new site at Olarongchu in Semtokha in March this year.

Plans to relocate the Changzamtog automobile workshops to the new site have been fraught with problems from the very beginning. Initially when the plan was proposed, land owners were not willing to give their land to establish workshops. And now workshop owners are complaining.

The Thimphu City Corporation has already announced that the workshops will have to be shifted by March. But workshop owners say the compartments are too small for heavy vehicle maintenance. They also said the roads leading to the workshop is too narrow and only one way traffic is possible.

The seven acres farm land, covering 35 plots, on which the workshops are being constructed, belongs to 22 private landowners.

The workshops were constructed by the landowners themselves and will be leased out to the workshop owners. Workshop owners told BBS that the proposed rent is too high. They said ultimately vehicle owners will end up paying more to repair and maintain their vehicles.

According to the officiating Thimphu Thrompon the new workshop with state of art technology will be reliable and systematic. He said they have notified the land owners to keep the rent at par with the prevailing market rate.