MHA official meets repatriated Brus in Mizoram

Aizawl:  Joint Secretary (North East) of Ministry of Home Affairs, Satyendra Garg on Saturday visited Damdiai village in Mamit district on Mizoram-Tripura-Bangladesh border and met leaders and other members of the Bru community who have been repatriated to Mizoram from Tripura.
Additional Secretary for the state Home department Lalbiakzama, who accompanied the MHA official said that Garg gave a patient hearing to the issues raised by the leaders of the Bru community saying the government would try to solve their problems. Bru Coordination Committee (BCC) Chairman Elvis Chorkhy told PTI over phone from Damdiai that Garg said that a Monitoring Committee in which repatriated Bru leaders would also be represented, would be constituted to monitor the problems faced by the resettled Brus and find ways to solve them.
Chorkhy said that the BCC submitted a memorandum to the Centre demanding establishment of the Special Development Program as envisaged in an agreement signed between the Mizoram government and the erstwhile underground Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) in 2005.
The BCC also urged the Centre to increase rehabilitation and resettlement package for each repatriated Bru family from Rs 80,000 and also temporary shelter for the repatriated Bru family be upgraded to semi-permanent shelter. “We suggested measures for solution to land problems for the Brus who left Mizoram in 1997 and also asked for establishment of Central Schools in the Bru inhabited areas as the community lagged behind in education,” Chorkhy said. (PTI)