Opposition irked over slow pace of anti-erosion projects across Assam

GUWAHATI: Cutting across party lines, a section of legislators of the ruling alliance and the Opposition expressed their concern over the slow progress of several anti-erosion works across the State. The Water Resources Minister also admitted it. He, however, gave a face-saving explanation that a smaller erosion-prevention project solves the problem in the given stretch only to create the same problem in another stretch. He said that only the bigger schemes can solve the problem, but that needs huge Central funds.

However, the mismatch is quite glaring between what the Minister said and what is seen on the ground. The Water Resources Department got a whopping budgetary allocation of Rs 5,484 crore from various sources like Rs 455 crore from SOPD, Rs 681 crore from NABARD, Rs 9.9 crore from NEC, Rs 3,547 crore from the Central government and Rs 49.97 crore from the State RIDF etc in the past four years.

On the contrary, the Department could spend only Rs 1,240 crore in the mentioned period.

During Question Hour, Pradip Hazarika of the AGP said, "In my area, a stretch of river bank has been badly affected by erosion for about 20 years, but the Department hasn't taken any erosion-preventive measure as yet. Also the minister's reply to the slow progress of anti-erosion projects doesn't sound serious."

AIUDF MLA Aminul Islam also alleged that the erosion-affected areas in his Dhing constituency too have been lying uncared for years on end.

Admitting the fact, Water Resources Minister Keshab Mahanta said, "This is because of taking smaller anti-erosion schemes. When we fix the problem of erosion in a stretch of river bank, another stretch suffers the same problem. While erecting the bridge over the Brahmaputra at Kaliabor, the width of the river was reduced to an extent, and that led to heavy erosion in the downstream. If we're to fix that problem, we need to take a 126-km-long anti-erosion project. But, such a project involves huge amount of Central funds.

"The situation got worsened during the Congress rule. The previous government allotted the work of an embankment scheme to 1,000 different contractors. The situation has come to such a pass that we can't even trace a number of those contractors."

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