By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Sep 25: North Garo Hills farmers have been denied of a modernised Food Processing Unit (FPU) even after 10 years of the initial project sanction, a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report noted.
The FPU, located in Dainadubi, had installed capacity of 30 metric tonnes until 2011. In a bid to salvage the facility, the state government proposed its modernisation and sanctioned a substantial sum of Rs 1.87 crores in March 2012.
However, the project’s commencement faced inordinate delays due to departmental technicalities, finally getting underway only in December 2014.
Thereafter, the assistant director of Horticulture, Fruit Preservation noted that the site of construction was in a low-lying area and the proposal construction of steam-generating boiler installation room in the factory was not in conformity with the technical specification of the food law and factory regulation, and was done without the purview of a technical expert.
Again, the project was halted, with an expenditure of Rs 26.48 lakhs already incurred.
In 2016, a revised expenditure estimate for civil works was submitted citing cost escalation compared to the original estimate of Rs 75.94 lakhs.
Despite government instructions to obtain technical approval the audit later revealed that it had been bypassed.
In the meantime, the project was gone ahead with and incurred additional expenses, reaching Rs 84.04 lakhs by February 2023.
The protracted modernisation effort, spanning eight years, has cost the government a total of Rs 5.70 crores in salary, wages, and other operational expenses.
However, the FPU has remained defunct since October 2021. The director of Horticulture attributed the delays to material shortages due to NGO protests
against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the pandemic.
However, the CAG noted that not only is the construction and modernisation unfinished, but there is also no progress in creating other essential infrastructure, such as the procurement and installation of machinery and equipment.
The report further emphasised that without technical approval and subsequent endorsement of the revised estimates submitted by the directorate to the government, the future prospects for the project appear bleak, rendering the expenditure of Rs 1.11 crores unproductive.