Shillong, June 28: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has taken up various issues with the Centre during his recent meetings with different union ministers in New Delhi.

Addressing media persons on Friday, Sangma informed that he had apprised the union DONER minister about the different projects that are pending with the ministry and requested the need to review the guidelines.

“I am very happy to inform that the minister has given assurance that all the pending projects that are there which are lying with the ministry will be cleared at the earliest,” he said adding “At the same time I had requested to him that the guidelines that are there in the ministry DONER are very complicated; they need to be streamlined. A normal project sometimes takes a year and a half even to reach an approval stage. Hence, easing of the guidelines would help in the overall process of the projects being approved and implemented; it would make it much faster. So I have requested and urged the minister to review the guidelines and accordingly the minister has assured me that he is already examining the guidelines and they should be reviewed very soon.”

The CM also informed that he had met the union civil aviation minister and requested the ministry to allow two shifts in the Umroi Airport. “…that would allow flights to take off early at the same time some evening and late night flights also to land. Since the facilities are there in Umroi airport there for night landing, this would allow more planes and more flights to be connected and the timing to be slightly more flexible and the minister has assured he will look into this matter. I hope that they should go through and if this goes through, like I said, there will be much more flexibility in the operations of the different airlines that are currently operating,” he said.

He said that the union minister had also assured to expedite the state government’s proposal for starting heliports for Shillong and Tura. “This is also at a very advanced stage of approval and sanction and this will ensure that a proper infrastructure is available for landing and the parking of the different helicopter services that are running and we also hope to expand in the future,” he said.

“I also appraised him about the expansion of the runway at Baljek airport and also the possibility of starting flights between Shillong and Tura. The minister has again shown full support in both of these aspects,” he added.

Rural development projects

Further, the CM informed that in his meeting with the minister of state for rural development, he had requested him and the ministry to streamline the processes of payments in the different projects that are there.

“The government of Meghalaya has been forming very well in terms of utilization of funds in terms of the rural development ministry. For example, last year itself, almost 1,50,000 PMAY houses that were constructed which is amounting to 1,500 crores plus of funds that were given by centres,” he said.

“At the same time bigger projects like the MGNREGA project and the schemes under those schemes also Meghalaya has performed well, in terms of the utilisation is taking place but lots of funds and pending bills are stuck with the ministry especially when it comes to the material components, and hence we have the minister if he could look into that aspects as it does affect the overall payment aspects as well as the implementation of future projects in the state,” he added.

Skill and entrepreneurship 
He said that he has also discussed with the minister for skill and entrepreneurship about the different programs that are being run in the state and “that we would wish to collaborate with the different programs of the central government’s ministry in terms of skill and how we could converge and work together.”

“At the same time also ensure that more projects that are state specific and more inclined towards the kind of skills required in Shillong and in the state of Meghalaya could be taken up, we discussed on those aspects. We also discussed about the opportunities that existed for our skilled manpower in parts of the world and I had shared with him the experience from Japan and also shared with him that we expect many more nurses to go as well as other skilled manpower to go to other parts of the world and that we would require the support of the ministry in terms of different language training and other facilities which we may require from the ministry,” he said.

Read: MDA Govt to complete full term, assures Conrad

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