Shillong, May 7: Meghalaya continues to evacuate its citizens from the ethnic riots hit Manipur, even as it has manged to evacuate over 150 of its citizens from the trouble-torn State. Meghalaya on Sunday evacuated 70 citizens, including 62 students, on Saturday it rescued 17 students and on Friday it brought back 66 students, totalling to 153 people.
The government has been doing its all to bring back its citizens at the earliest with the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma personally monitoring the evacuation operation, but the situation has its own challenges that are being overcome one step at a time.
One of the issues that has been discovered is that all the students couldn’t be evacuated in one go because the Manipur government is not allowing charted planes to land at Imphal Airport. Thus, government has to book tickets in commercial flights coming out of Imphal. This is the biggest reasons that the evacuation process for the citizens of Meghalaya from Manipur is taking so long.
Another mention is of the MMA (Meghalaya Medical Association) that has been playing an instrumental role in coordinating with the students and reaching out to the government to ensure the evacuation process is smooth.
Arnestar Warjri, a final year MBBS student at Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Imphal, who has been coordinating the evacuation of students at RIMS with the government, informed that RIMS alone has 178 students from Meghalaya. While most have been evacuated, 29 students remain on campus, who will be evacuated on Monday including himself.
He is grateful to the Meghalaya government for the smooth evacuation process.
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Another student of RIMS, M. Shylla, shared that their evacuation process was quite smooth as the government had arranged everything for them, including vehicles at Guwahati Airport to take them home.
Shylla said they learnt about the evacuation process after 66 agriculture students were evacuated on May 5. She contacted some of her friends and also members of the Meghalaya Medical Association (MMA), and learnt that they would also be evacuated.
In the course of her enquiry about the evacuation process, she also talked to Additional Chief Secretary Dr. Shakil P. Ahammed, OSD to Chief Minister Daniel M Thangkhiew, and even the President of Khasi Students’ Union (KSU). She also learnt about the delay in the evacuating process being due Manipur government’s is not allowing chartered planes to land.
Shylla noted that the Meghalaya Medical Association helped coordinate the evacuation of the RIMS students, and she reached back home safely on Saturday night.
She expressed her gratitude to the government of Meghalaya and the Chief Minister in particular for their efforts in ensuring the safe return of their citizens.
Mentionably, government has arranged for evacuation 70 students/citizens on May 8, 30 students/citizens on May 9, and 15 students/citizens on May 10.
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