Village Employment Council (VEC) functionaries of Millanpur, under Demdema block in West Garo Hills, are proceeding with a drainage project despite opposition on the part of local villagers.
According to the villagers, the drainage system proposed will not only be useless to them but will also affect their daily lives as the digging up of the road would leave them unable to undertake their daily commute to and from work.
The proposed drainage system will also be constructed after digging up another road project under the rural employment guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) built in 2017-18.
They added that most people of the village had no problem with the current system of drainage owing to their geological placement.
“The project is unwarranted and unwanted and has nothing to do with our livelihoods. This work order has been sought only to misappropriate money,” said the villagers in a complaint submitted to the Deputy Commissioner and the local Demdema Community and Rural Development office.
The villagers said that they were clueless about the project until officers from the block came to the village to do survey work.
“The proposed drainage system will damage the existing road and cause us a huge amount of problems. It thereby needs to be scrapped. We were never consulted on this project or we would have made our objections clear even before the proposal took place,” the villagers added.
More than 60 households from Millanpur signed the complaint to the DC in the hope that the proposal was not forced upon them.
“We just want the administration to look into the matter and stop the proposed system of drainage. It is definitely going to cause more problems than solve them,” they opined.
