TURA: Catholic run schools and colleges from all over Garo Hills on Wednesday remained closed as a mark of protest and condemnation against the frequent attacks on Catholic Parishes and institutions, by miscreants in the last few weeks. The shut down protest was also aimed at demanding from concerned authorities the immediate arrests of the culprits.
As many as 100 schools and all colleges run by Catholic missionaries in Garo Hills including those under Don Bosco and the Loyola College at Williamnagar remained shut on the day to show their unity in condemning the incidents.
Other schools like the Educere School in Williamnagar also closed down for the day to show solidarity. Schools along the road from Dadeng to Phulbari, Rongreng Model School and the Chidekgre Robinus T Sangma School also cooperated with the protest and remained closed.
The call for the protest close down was given after armed dacoits forcibly broke into six Catholic Parishes in the span of a few weeks, in the process looting the parishes and assaulting priests in charge. Taking advantage of the darkness during load shedding hours, armed dacoits had targeted the parishes at Dawagre, Chokpot, Dalu, Garobadha, Tikrikilla and Samanda.
Meanwhile, much to the relief of the Churches and the general public as a whole, load shedding hours were on Wednesday re-scheduled by the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL). According to the new schedule, load shedding hours for the entire West and South West Garo Hills will begin from 5 am to 7 am. For the other three districts of East, South and North Garo Hills load shedding will be from 4 am to 6 am and 1 pm to 3 pm in the afternoon.
The re-scheduling of the load shedding hours comes after requests were made to the concerned authority to keep the power shut down confined to daytime. Earlier on Tuesday, Raksamgre MLA and Co-Chairman of the Meghalaya State Planning Board, Benedic R Marak had written to Power Minister James K Sangma urging him to direct the MeECL authorities to re-schedule load shedding hours for the daytime all over Garo Hills.