Shillong,Oct 23: Meghalaya Pradesh Youth Congress (MPYC) has pointed out that only 27 persons attended the public consultation for the ropeway project, according to Meghalaya Institute of Governance website.
Addressing a press conference, MPYC member Ebenezer Nongjop Syiem cited official documents to substantiate
large-scale forest loss, weak public consultation and safety risks in the proposed Shillong Peak Ropeway project.
“As per details, the 2022 public consultation uploaded on the Meghalaya Institute of Governance website had only 27 attendees”, he said.
“The consultation was conducted by the Meghalaya Institute of Governance as required under the Environment and Social Management Plan with the involvement of Riat Laban Dorbar Pyllun. The attendance sheet shows only 27 attendees – 5 from the government and the rest from the Shnong, maybe 3-4 residents of Riat Laban. Considering the importance of the project, this is too low,” Syiem said.
He said 80 percent of respondents raised negative impact on rivers.
“Out of the 27 who attended, 80 percent opinion on impact on quality of rivers in Shillong Peak area was negative. It will be affected,” he said.
Regarding forest clearance, Syiem said, “The lower terminal will require 4,000 sqm, roughly one acre, and the upper terminal 2,400 sqm, roughly half an acre. Both are dense forest. The Right of Way will be 20 metres, about 60 feet, for 1 km. Pictures from Green Tech show they have already felled certain portions even though they said they won’t clear trees in the Right of Way.”
“As per an RTI reply by the Executive Engineer, Directorate of Tourism, 26,000 sqm is required for development including stations and towers, and 19,100 sqm under the Right of Way. We don’t know whether trees will be preserved,” he said.
Criticising the choice of technology, he said, “There are five ropeway systems – mono-cable, bi-cable, tri-cable, pulse and detachable gondola. They chose mono-cable because it is cheapest and easy to maintain. Mono-cable has only one cable supporting the trolley. Bi-cable has two cables for support if anything goes wrong with the main cable.”
MPCC secretary Manuel Badwar accused the government of bypassing crucial departments.
“Projects like this involve water resources, soil conservation, pollution control, geological survey. All should work together, do a proper survey, use LiDAR, plot water bodies, water tables, underground water movement, count trees impacted, assess carbonisation and oxygenation impact for Shillong city, do social costing and show losses and advantages to the public,” Badwar said.
“Shillong has 7-8 lakh population. That forest sustains Jaiaw, Laban, Malki, Laitumkhrah, Mawprem – water supply and fresh air. You can’t have a public hearing of 27 people and say we have done our job. It is totally bogus. There was no transparency, no environmental or societal impact assessment. We are not against development, but we are against shortcuts,” he said.
“A single cable system in seismic zone 5 is definitely not safe. Why is the only stakeholder the tourism department? What does tourism have to do with environment? Why bring an outside consultant to give a rosy picture when our own departments have specialists? If they had been transparent from day one with proper research and published papers, nobody would have questioned,” he said.
