SHILLONG: While the drafts of various policies of state government departments are pending for long, there are many state government departments which continue to work without any policies.
The state currently has only Meghalaya Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (MIIPP) 2012 Information Technology 2004 and policy on disaster risk management which, however, are not fully utilized to bring the desired results, sources said.
The draft policies which are pending to be finalized include Meghalaya Tourism policy, Health policy, Education and Water policies pending since 2013, and Sports policy.
However the policies related to Agriculture, Power and Wild life are not even in draft forms.
Though the government framed the Mining Policy 2012, it was never implemented as the state government had said in the past that more fine tuning was required in this regard.
Moreover, with the NGT ban on coal mining, the government was asked to frame fresh mining policy and guidelines to be submitted to the union ministry of coal.
Asked about the delay in finalizing the education policy, an official recently said that since there was lack of feedback and suggestions from the public, the matter has been pending.
Though there is no Agriculture policy, ironically the website of the agriculture department mentions about downloading organic pesticides information system for Android phone.
The state sports and youth policy has been spending since 2007 as per the website of sports department. Two drafts, one state youth policy (pending since 2012) and another sports policy (2007) were posted in the website.
Earlier during the budget session in March in the Assembly last year, the Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Zenith Sangma had cited lack of experts in the sports department as one of the reasons for the delay in framing the sports policy.
The sports department had also asked IIM Shillong to prepare the Meghalaya Sports Policy as according to the Sports Minister, the State Resource Group formed on May 20, 2014 and headed by the then president of Meghalaya State Olympic Association R G Lyngdoh failed to come up with the draft.
However, as per records, the same Sports Minister had told the Assembly during the budget session in March 2014 that the approval of the National Youth Policy, 2014 by the Centre had led to a slight delay in the finalization of the State Youth Policy. He also had set the target of completing the sports policy by September, 2014 which, however, did not materialize. As far as Health policy is concerned, the stand of the state government in outsourcing the preparation of the policy way back in 2009 to MLCU due to lack of manpower in the department to prepare the policy, was criticized by the Opposition in 2012.
The draft policy was submitted in 2010 and Rs 7 lakh was also paid to the consultant.
