Editor,
Ever since the central government announced to construct a PMSGY road connecting far-flung Ekke and Ketha villages in Siyum circle of Upper Subansiri district, the villagers are excited over travelling on this road in their vehicles. It is the dream of the villagers since time immemorial to have road connectivity with the rest of the world.
It is believed that surface communication is the mother of all development. Roads ameliorate the hardship of pedestrians and stop people’s migration from disconnected areas to towns and cities, where people have choices and access.
In view of this, we have not demanded a single penny as land compensation, and instead allowed and urged the contactors and the work agency to carry out the road construction work. However, the work on the PMGSY road towards both the villages is currently progressing at a snail’s pace and it needs to be speeded up in the winter, because summer season brings heavy rainfall and causes landslides along the work site and poses danger to the labourers and the contractors.
The earth-cutting along this under-construction road is already endangering the lives of commuters – more so of the carriers of rations and other commodities. It’s also learnt that the work is not progressing smoothly. Sometimes it takes a month or more to complete a mere distance of half-a-kilometre. There is even a dearth of human resource and machineries. An aged earthmover is stationed along the work site, and it needs to be repaired as soon as possible. The people at the work site keep coming up with one pretext or the other as to why the machines are not working. The road would have reached its destination, Ketha, had the work been carried out through the year.
The contractor, the authority concerned, and the work agency should pay heed to our request to look into the matter of quality and completion of the road work within the timeframe stipulated by the central government. More importantly, they should make no attempt to siphon off the fund allocated for the road.
The relevant questions are: Who is constructing this road? When will it reach Ekke and Ketha villages? And why is there shortage of human resource and machineries for the construction of this road?
Majum Ekke