By Our Reporter
Shillong: The traffic snarl in the city has become a daily nightmare for the people with no sign of improvement.
In the early hours of Monday morning, chaos and anger spread all over the city as many of the people especially school-going children who are appearing in their annual examinations in the city got caught in the jam and arrived late at their respective schools.
“This traffic problem in the city has reached an irreversible point. I left home at 7.30 am and arrive at office only at 12 am,” one frustrated government employee said.
It took two students from Rilbong 90 minutes to reach their school at Fire Brigade. Like them, many students of Laban Bengali Boys’ HS School reached their examination hall late.
In Army School some students reached 45 minutes after their exams started.
Though the affected students were given extra time by the school authorities but due to nervousness, the students could not give their best. A teacher from one of these schools said, “We allowed them extra town but the students were so nervous they could not gather their wits. Though we tried to calm them down they were very disturbed.”
The mother of a girl student fumed, “The traffic personnel along with the minister should be shown the door immediately. I was told by a traffic personnel that the congestion started from Sunday night.” Another parent said he and his son got off the cab and literally ran to the boy’s school. The condition was worst last week when school students reached their school late every day. On Monday morning even newspapers did not reach the readers on time due to the traffic congestion.
Apart from these school students, one resident of Shillong who was returning from Guwahati to attend a function at Shillong Civil Hospital scheduled to be held at 11am left for Shillong at 6 in the morning and only reached at 2pm. “After we reached Mawlai at 8.15 am, I could see a huge line of cars in front of me and I thought it would take only some time for the traffic to move but it took almost six hours for the vehicles to move”, the affected person said.
He blamed the traffic police for giving top priority to the trucks which were plying from Shillong to Guwahati. “The traffic condition is pathetic and what is more surprising is that for almost 6 hours, no traffic personnel were seen managing the traffic”, he added.
Similarly, one resident of Shillong who works in Guwahati left Shillong at 6 am and reached his office in the afternoon. Many commuters who had to catch their flight from Guwahati airport were seen leaving Shillong at midnight from Friday onwards since they did not want to miss their flight. “My son was unsure how much time it would take to reach the airport and so he left at 1am on Saturday morning,” said a Mawprem resident.
