Umroi flights, Medical Colleges, Secretariat and major road projects: CM Conrad outlines 2025 plans

Shillong, Jan 15: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday shared his New Year’s resolution plans for ensuring commercial flights land in Umroi airport, opening of the medical colleges, construction of the government secretariat at Mawdiangdiang and implementation of major road projects.

Speaking about the Umroi airport, Sangma said, “I am very particular that the flights as fast as possible, the commercial flights should land in Umroi. And even yesterday, we had a meeting. I am having a meeting tomorrow in Delhi also for this and in the first week of February we will be having a meeting with stakeholders.”

Stating that the government of India is giving full support for this, the CM said, “I hope very soon direct commercial flights will land from Delhi and other places and I believe that that is going to be one of the biggest game changer for our state especially when it comes to sectors like tourism and even education and overall growth of our state and accessibility for the people of our state and for the tourists from outside to come and experience in our state. So this is one thing that I am very keen on and I hope that it will move in the right direction. I cannot really pinpoint and say that it will be in this month or this particular year but I hope it will be very soon.”

He informed that earlier the government was made to understand that landing of bigger flights is something which cannot happen because the technical feasibility is not there.

“But it is after our determination that we said that why cannot it happened and we got our technical specifications relooked into, we got different expertise to come and our technical experts to come in and recheck the entire provisions, and Airport Authority to relook into the entire aspect and we are so happy that we did that because when we did it, because lot of people say there is no use doing it because they only said we cannot do it, we cannot land big planes here,” the CM said while adding “But we said look let’s give a try, so when we did that, the technical report said now that with the new technology is available, it is possible and Indigo and other Airlines like Spice have already given in writing that if the extension of the runway is done in this manner and the other provisions as per prescribed by Airports Authority are implemented, they will be landing their commercial flights in that is the A320 flights in Umroi airport. So I’m hopeful that that will happen very soon.”

The CM also informed that the government is working very hard to ensure flight connectivity between Shillong and Tura.

“Again, I’m happy to tell you that we are working very hard. We have had multiple meetings on this aspect and the Government of India in its recent UDAN scheme also has included that sector.”

Two medical colleges:

“I am hopeful that we should be able to start the Shillong Medical College from this academic year which is sometime in September 2025 and we are working hard to make the Tura Medical College also active,” the CM informed.

On the status of Tura medical college, he said, “Though the infrastructure is coming up very fast, we have challenges in terms of manpower, so manpower to work there is not available and even with this expenditures that will run into hundreds of crores, if we have to run it even though we are looking at the options of that, we are not getting the manpower so we have to look at different possibilities on how we could achieve that but that is one area that we are very keen to see that two of our medical colleges which is Shillong and Tura medical college should be activated.”

Construction of new secretariat in Mawdiangdiang:

The CM informed, “On the 21st of January that is Meghalaya day, we will be laying the foundation stone for the new secretariat in Mawdiangdiang. That is going to be very important, we are hopeful that we will be able to complete at least a few of the blocks within the next two years so that we can actually shift some of the offices from here.”

“So the administrative approval for that has been done and we will lay the foundation stone on the 21st of this month which is Meghalaya Day and I hope that we will be able to complete and the tendering process should be complete by next month and work should be awarded. So we hope that work will start very soon in that aspect,” he added.

He further added, “At the same time, the Mini secretariat in Tura is also going to be implemented within the next month or so, it’s again a 120 crores project. In Tura this infrastructure will come up, in Jowai and Pynursla it will come up. We feel that it’s important to give that overall attention to overall administration and bring administration closer to the people of the state.”

Major road projects:

The CM said, “We are also looking forward to a large number of road projects. This entire project for the expression corridor Umiam and Rattacherra and beyond into Assam, is a project that I’m very excited about. It’s almost Rs 24000 crores projects, it will be one of the biggest projects ever to be implemented in the state of Meghalaya and maybe the region as a whole.”

“So this is something that I am very excited about, I hope that we should be able to complete the procedures and work should start for that,” he stated.

Similarly in Shillong city, the CM announced the government’s plan to construct elevated roads for decongestion of the city.

“After our meeting last time with the minister for road and surface transport, we have convinced him in the meeting that we need to have elevated roads in Shillong City especially connecting the junction of Umshyrpi all the way coming to Anjali and then one road going down to the Barabazar and then the elevated road continuing along the main road across the JOC residence across the Garrison ground over it and reaching to the Civil Hospital junction then we expect one road will go down into the Jowai road and one the road will go down towards the Secretariat. So this elevated Road is important because it will make the city look nicer because there will be a sign of a kind of double-decker, a kind of a Road. But more importantly obviously will be having traffic flow from below also and from above also, so obviously that would lead to major decongestion of the city,” he said.

The CM informed that he will be meeting the union minister for road transport the day after tomorrow on the matter.

“We have already discussed it, NHIDCL has been already instructed to do the technical feasibility ASAP but I’m going to do another follow up to ensure that this is expedited because I would like to see the work of this particular road start at the earliest because as mentioned this would be a major game changer of for us,” he added.

Also Read: Meghalaya urge centre to speed up ILP implementation to pave way for railways

Also Watch

Find latest news from every corner of Northeast India at hubnetwork.in, your online source for breaking news, video coverage.