Situated at the foot of the hills that rise up to Zhemgang dzongkhag, Serzhong village is a fertile stretch of flat land perfectly suited for paddy cultivation. But only seven of the 63 households in this village, eight kilometres from Gelephu town, cultivate paddy. This is because monsoon torrents keep washing away irrigation channels and deposit sand and gravel into the fields making cultivation impossible. And so about 100 acres of paddy land in the village have become fallow land filled with shrubs. "I'm lucky I don't have to buy rice from the market,' said Sonam Wangdi, 61, one of the seven householders in the village who still cultivates paddy, using water from a small stream that flows alongside the village. "What I produce is sufficient for my family of six,' he told Kuensel. Nima, 63, whose two-acre paddy field has become fallow, spends about Nu 1,000 every month, buying rice from Gelephu town. Serzhong farmers also grow mandarin and do manual work when the agriculture season is over to earn income. Farmers like Nima lament that, if they could cultivate their own paddy, they would not feel the burden of increasing prices with essential commodities. Nima told Kuensel that they were resettled in Serzhong from Zhemgang in 1975. The resettlers turned the then dense forest into wetland and dry land then constructed an irrigation channel in the late 1970s. They cultivated their fields for about 10 years, after which their irrigation channel was washed away in the monsoons by the swelling Tsermolagang river, named after a woman whose house is located near the small stream that swells every summer. Serzhong villagers said that they tried every year to maintain the irrigation canal but it was not possible as the erected walls supporting the canal always got washed away. Then it was the sand and gravel deposited by small brooks that turned into furious torrents in summer. Penden Dorji, 50, whose fields are the most affected, told Kuensel that his labour had gone to waste trying to clear the debris every monsoon. Penden Dorji said that he applied for new resettlement but was turned down as he had land registered in his name. "Nobody understands our problem,' he said. Local residents told Kuensel that they raised the issue whenever a government official visited their village. They even asked their tshogpa (village representative) to raise the issue at the gewog yargye tshogchung (GYT). Kuensel talked to tshogpa Ugyen Tshering, who said that he had been raising it at the GYT every time. The former tshogpa also raised the issue, and it is included as the gewog's priority, according to Serzhong gup Rinzin Wangdi. But the matter was never brought to the dzongkhag yargye tshogdu (DYT) at the district level. The dzongkhag agricultural officer, Tashi Wangdi, said that he had never been aware of the problem. "The dzongkhag will definitely consider the issue if it's a serious problem and within our capacity,' he told Kuensel.