New Delhi: More than 100 villagers are sweating it out everyday to fulfill their most cherished dream — building a road to connect remote areas of Manipur, Assam and Nagaland and have taken to crowd funding to achieve their target before Christmas. Namdeilung from Manipur’s remote Phoklong village has witnessed 90 summers and now wants to see the 100-km road being completed at the earliest.
He has contributed Rs 1,000 from his old-age pension. Namdeilung wants to see motorcars zoom past this road before seeing his last day. He is not the only exception. People living abroad in the US, the UK, Canada and Scotland have also contributed, says Jeremiah Pame, an assistant professor of English at Delhi University, who is taking the initiative of raising funds for the Tamenglong-Haflong Road construction work.
Jeremiah’s brother Armstrong, an IAS officer who is the SDO of Tousem sub-division, is supervising the work.
“The 100-km-long road starts from Tamenglong in Manipur and mainly passes through the state’s most backward subdivision Tousem of Manipur. The distance to be constructed is around 100 km. Till now about 75 km has been completed,” Armstrong told PTI over phone from Tousem. Interestingly no engineer or contractor has been hired for the project. According to Jeremiah, work began in full swing from the first week of September.
Three machines are being used – one bulldozer and two JCB excavators – at the construction site. “Contractors have given us these machines for use. The only expenditure on these machines is oil. Besides our other expenditure is on food,” says Armstrong.
The Pame family has given more than Rs 4 lakh for the project. Now, social network site Facebook is also being used to raise funds. “We have set up collection points in all several cities like Delhi, Shillong, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Guwahati and Dimapur,” says Jeremiah.
He says when this road is done, “we will erect a monolith, on which names of all donors will be engraved so that people will remember their good deeds”.
Villagers are dying to see their dreams turning into reality. “It is not that the elderly want to travel, but they just wants their children and grandchildren live better life and get proper education. Now they don’t have to stay back in the village, they can all get good education,” says Jeremiah. (PTI)