Shillong, May 3: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma made a surprised unscheduled visit to the Jawaharlal Nehru Sports Complex at Polo grounds in Shillong late Monday night to see for himself the condition of the living accommodations for the sports persons and watched over their shifting to better amenities in hotels in the city.
Despite a heavy schedule of meetings in Delhi, including with central minister for education Dharmendra Pradhan to get the CUET exemption for the state students, the chief minister drove straight from Guwahati airport to Shillong’s polo ground to meet with dozens of affected sports persons who came to participate in the Meghalaya Games 2022 and have been living under terrible and unhygienic conditions given to them by the organizing committee.
The chief minister visited the poorly arranged dormitories and spoke with the athletes informing them about the arrangements being done to take them to town to stay in hotels being arranged for them.
“This is not at all good. Things should have been worked out properly from before,” an angry and exhausted chief minister said to members of the organizing committee who stood silently by the side.
Shockingly, the Meghalaya Sports Minister Banteidor Lyngdoh, under whose watch the games are being organized was not even present at the games complex when the chief minister had made it a point to visit the athletes even after a long journey from Delhi.
Athletes and officials have even disclosed that the sports minister was not even present to meet the arriving sport persons on Monday nor came to inspect even after the entire state was up in arms over the shoddy treatment being meted out to visiting athletes from distant areas of Meghalaya, especially the Garo Hills region.
Seeing off a group of badminton players from North Garo Hills to a requisitioned STPS bus enroute to a hotel, chief minister Conrad K Sangma assured them of all help.
In another section of the games venue he visited a dormitory where another batch of sports persons from Garo Hills were holed up.
“We are arranging more rooms in hotels and if anyone wishes to move out tonight itself we will make all arrangements. Juat give me at best an hour to get things arranged because even I have just landed from Delhi,” said the chief minister.
Some of the athletes were visibly pleased to see the head of state coming down to check on their living conditions and were taken by surprise when the chief minister gave them a phone number to directly contact him for any eventuality.
Addressing a group of officials outside the building, the chief minister said, “I have given them my access number so that they can directly contact me for any emergency. I am not at all happy with how things have been done. This is not the way,” an angry Conrad K Sangma thundered to the officials who were present, including the working chairman of the organising committee John F Kharshiing.
An official from Shillong who was also unhappy with the poor arrangements told the chief minister that most of the affected sport persons were from Garo Hills who had been put up in accommodations where there was no water for toilet use and roofs were leaking with rain water.
“The condition of the building where the athletes have been put up is leaking and most of the accommodated are from Garo Hills. The bathrooms are in pathetic condition and toilets have no water for use,” disclosed the official to the chief minister while the organizing committee members stood by as dazed mute spectators unable to comprehend the seriousness of the situation.
