SHILLONG: Shillong is known to the world over as the ‘Scotland of the East,’ hence justifiably Nongkrem legislator Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit is shocked to know that the Mawlai locality of the city has been notified as a slum area.
“It is difficult to digest that Mawlai is considered as a slum,” Basaiawmoit said in the Meghalaya assembly on Friday, in reaction to a statement of Urban Affairs Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh during the question hours in the Assembly here on Friday.
The Nongkrem legislator asked on what basis Mawlai was being considered a slum.
Talking to newsmen after the assembly session, the Urban Affairs Minister said, however, that she had not attributed the whole of Mawlai as slum, adding that there was a misunderstanding.
The fact was that only two localities in Mawlai (Mawlai Nongmali and Mawlai Mawroh) had been notified slums, where the department had taken up projects under Environmental Improvement of Urban Slum (EIUS).
She informed the assembly that in fact there were notified slums in other areas in the Greater Shillong area as well. These were located in Qualapatty, Lumparing, Malki, Laitumkhrah, Upper Mawprem, Lower Mawprem, Madan Laban, Riat Laban, Wahingdoh, Barapathar, Wahthapbru, Laban, Goraline (Laitumkhrah), Harijan colony (Mawlong Hat), Pynthorumkhrah I, Pynthorumkhrah II, Naspatighari (Mawbah), Polo Bazaar, Demseiñiong, Keating Road, Jhalupara, Paltan Bazar (Cantonment) and Nongmynsong.
The Minister informed the assembly that the Meghalaya Slum Area (Improvement and Clearance) Act, 1973 defined a slum as an area “in any respect unfit for human habitation or by any reason of dilapidation overcrowding, narrowness or faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation height or sanitation facilities or any combination of some or all of these factors is detrimental to safety health or moral of the people of the area.”
“On the basis of the above criteria, the identification of slum areas is taken up by conducting physical as well as socio-economic survey. A total of 23 numbers of slums was identified and notified in Greater Shillong area,” Urban Affairs Minister said.
“Slum improvement works are stopped on reaching the per capita permissible expenditure (Rs 300 per capita) in each locality,” Lyngdoh said. But no slum had yet been formally denotified.
