Repair of roads, highways
By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma on Wednesday informed the Assembly that the State Government was planning to earmark funds for repairing of the major district headquarters road and highways through the Plan fund.
Several major district roads and highways have remained unrepaired for the past several years since the fund presently is being allocated through the non-plan, Dr Sangma said his course of reply on the Governor’s address.
“We have now realized that sanctioning of fund through the non-plan is not enough to repair important roads,” he said.
“With this new arrangement, the government would be able to repair these roads once in five years,” Chief Minister. He also believed that this new policy of the Government would also help to ease the burden on the PWD which has pending bills of over Rs 200 crore to be paid to the contractors. “In the past, the PWD would allot works to the contractors without the availability of funds. This has resulted in a huge backlog in the contractor bills for the past so many years,” Dr Sangma said.
POWER PROJECTS: Dr Sangma informed the House that the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) of several smaller power projects was not conducted. “We have conducted PFS of those projects which have potentials to generate substantial amount of electricity. We have taken the decision to call for EOIs of these projects in accordance with the State Power Policy and Electricity Act, 2003,” the Chief Minister said. According to him, the government kept a condition that for projects upto 2 MW there will be equity up to 50 per cent for local stakeholders adding that 26 per cent equity for projects below 10 MW would be kept reserved for local entrepreneurs. Expressing his disappointment over Dr Sangma’s reply, the leader of Opposition Conrad K Sangma said, “It is surprising that the Government did not conduct PFS before taking a decision to call for EOIs”.