SHILLONG: Meghalaya’s minister for PWD (Buildings), Comingone Ymbon has assured that the work on the entry and exit point at Umling along the Guwahati-Shillong road will be expedited once the department gets the necessary sanction from the State Government.
Talking to media persons here on Thursday, Ymbon said that he couldn’t pressurise the contractor since he had already spent huge amount on the construction without even the project getting sanctioned.
‘We are hoping to get the sanction before March and after that we will fully expedite the project,” the PWD Minister said even as he added that the Government so far has not fixed any deadline for the project in the absence of any sanction.
“I have asked the Planning Department to immediately sanction the project,” he said.
The upcoming entry and exit point will have rest rooms, restaurants and other facilities as well.
Reacting to a query about the entry and exit points which is supposed to come up in other parts of the state, he said that the department has not even started the process for sanction as and it is difficult to go ahead with other projects right now.
He also said that the Government had fund constraints and pressure groups which are demanding the setup also knows about it.
It may be mentioned that the contractor of the project has already spent more than Rs three crore from his own pocket and has expressed his inability to continue with the work further in the absence of any sanction from the government.
Initially, the estimate for the entry and exit point at Umling was Rs 220 crore, but since the land belongs to the state government, it was subsequently scaled down to Rs 44.5 crore.
It may be recalled that the land development work for the project started since May 1 last year.
The entry and exit point was conceptualised during the tenure of previous MUA government when different pressure groups had raised demands for introducing inner line permit in the state to check influx.
The MDA government finally started construction of the entry and exit point at Umling saying it wanted to send a strong message that it was committed to put in place a strong mechanism to address the issue of influx and illegal immigration.
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