Shillong, May 24: Opposition Leader Mukul Sangma will inspect different projects including the proposed construction of the new government secretariat in the New Shillong Township (NST) while questioning the delay in implementing Ampati football stadium project in South West Garo Hills District.
“We will be visiting the construction sites of different projects which are being taken up by this government, including the so-called new secretariat where the government has said that they are investing or rather spending Rs1000 crore”, he told reporters on Saturday.
“I don’t know what type of new secretariat they want to construct? How many rooms will be there? What is the total built up area? All these things will be required to be known by the public. People should know what will be the built up area, 1000 rooms if you build then 1000 rooms x Rs 1crore it will be Rs1000 crore. How many rooms are there, how rooms are constructed and what is the kind of benchmark in as far as the quality is concerned? Are they constructing a seven star hotel standard or five star standard hotel?”
“All these things would be part of our exercise and I am concerned by the way the scarce resources from public exchequer whether it is from government of India or whether it is from the state government public money is public money. Therefore, we will have to be meticulous in our approach and also stringent in our approach. We will put the whole system under scanner and see that the interest of the people and interest of the state is protected,” Sangma said.
Criticising the government over the delay to complete the Ampati football stadium, the former chief minister said that Ampati stadium is one of the infrastructures created along with other infrastructures in the context of National Games in 2017 and considering Shillong and Tura, the government wanted to include the Eastern part and the Western part while hosting National Games. “Therefore keeping in mind the need to have land available, Tura stadium was constructed replacing the earlier name of Dikibandi stadium, and the stadium was supposed to be constructed in another area with 25 acres of land but the government of the day chose to construct in the existing infrastructures, which were already created with the state fund.”
He said construction works were going on in Ampati stadium and investment from the scarce resources of public exchequer was made on infrastructure development which was already being created with the money which was spent from the public exchequer, hence there is duplicacy.
Sangma added:”You don’t construct a stadium in an area where you don’t even have a space for parking. You don’t have enough space for the sporting fans to stand in a queue while entering into the stadium. So there are many other issues related, you know, the security, overall checking and in the event of disaster, emergency exit this and that all these things are important.”
He questioned what has stopped the government from completing the Ampati football stadium.
“And not only that I have seen that over and above whatever money was sanctioned they have added some amount. Therefore, there will be necessity from the side of the people to know where have those money, which were earlier sanctioned spent under which different components of the work,” Sangma said.
“I have checked up with different components which were supported by that initial sanction amount and also the other components of work which were again funded by the state government. So it’s quite interesting because I have reasons to believe that there is a duplicacy in as far as that work is concerned. Similarly, there are similar kind of things elsewhere.”
