Monday, February 24, 2025
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Border road work hits rain hurdle

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GUWAHATI: Inclement weather has put the brakes on the construction of a PMGSY road linking about 40 remote villages nestled on the hills near the Assam-Meghalaya border to the markets of Kamrup district.

The “half-completed” road has of late dampened hopes of several rural families who depend on agriculture to make ends meet, as transporting farm produce to the markets can only become easier once the mucky kutcha stretches make way for black-topped surfaces.

“The villagers’ lives in a way hinge on this PMGSY road. But till now, only about 50 per cent work – an 8km stretch from Parogaon (about 10km from Boko town) to Mozaibari – has been completed. Work on the stretch between Mozaibari and some of these hamlets has not resumed ever since rains intervened this season,” Anindro Marak, president of the Garo National Council (GNC), Kamrup district, told The Shillong Times on Sunday.

Ideally, road connectivity from Mozaibari to places like Ukiam and Lampi (Langpih), about 30km away, would have served these interior, underdeveloped villages better.

“But lack of all-weather roads to Ukiam and Lampi has made access to the town areas an uphill task for the villagers. Moreover, the high water current of the (otherwise not too deep) Pesreng river, poses a risky proposition as well. People have to wait for two to three hours for the water level to subside during rain to steadily allow bigger vehicles to negotiate the odds and pass by,” Marak said.

But the villagers haven’t lost hope as resumption of work is inevitable once the rainy season makes way for autumn.

“The construction started earlier in the year. But we hope that once the work resumes in the dry season, the pucca road would facilitate better connectivity to these villagers,” he said.

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