The massive mudslide near Tujang Vaichong Sub Divisional Headquarters, Imphal-Tamenglong road was cleared on Tuesday and vehicles started plying in the afternoon.
TFM Kangpokpi Representative
The massive mudslide near Tujang Vaichong Sub Divisional Headquarters, Imphal-Tamenglong road was cleared on Tuesday and vehicles started plying in the afternoon.
The local people with the help of an excavator provided by the 4th Bihar Regiment Tamei Battalion and another one from Makui cleared the debris on Monday.
According to KSO Twilang block president Enock Kipgen, a team led by SDO T Vaichong, James Pani along with DFO Kangpokpi Chingpilhing Kipgen, PWD executive engineer Loken Singh, Kangpokpi police and a team of NDRF and SDRF visited the site on Tuesday.
He said that the team reached the spot Lamlenkon around 1:30 pm and inspected the whole area. As insisted by the DFO Kangpokpi, the team also visited the source of the mudslide area, he added.
The team found a huge portion of a hillock had collapsed and they concluded that a permanent solution can never happen after visiting the source of the mudslide, said Enock Kipgen.
He said that the course of the stream must be restored by clearing the debris and also clear the perennial water canal sources of the paddy fields while pointing out that almost all the paddy fields submerged by the mudslide belong to farmers of T Vaichong.
He also urged the state government and authorities concerned to compensate all the paddy fields inundated by the mudslides beyond repair and provide financial assistance to the affected farmers.
CM Biren’s remark
Meanwhile, the Kuki Students’ Organization, General Headquarters and Kuki Reformation Forum condemned the alleged ‘irresponsible statement’ of chief minister N Biren Singh over the T Vaichong mudslide in a separate statement.
Sharply reacting to chief minister Facebook post, KSO-GHQ said that the chief minister instead of having empathy on the hardships faced by the people of the area chose to gloat over their pains by attributing it to a poppy plantation.
It said that it would have been sagacious if the chief minister did a little soul searching before coming out with such outrageous comments given the fact that there is no iota of poppy cultivation in T Vaichong village.
Claiming that this is not the first time the present chief minister had made ‘malicious remarks’ against the Kuki community, the student body said it has become the sad state of affairs under the present dispensation to push the Kuki community to the wall on any pretext and demanded that the chief minister should apologise to the Kuki community.
Elucidating that in one of his Facebook post late last year the chief minister made an infamous Freudian slip by calling the Kuki community as ‘refugees’ which was responsible for opening a floodgate of further insinuations, taunts, denigration, and insults to an intolerable degree that saw the climax during the ‘Koubru impasse’.
The particular comment had deeply hurt the sentiments of the Kuki people but the chief minister instead of apologising for his faux pas passed on the buck to some make-believe hackers who are still at large till today, it added.
Meanwhile, the Kuki Reformation Forum stated that the chief minister’s statement on the T Vaichong mudslide is yet another intimation of the egregious statesmanship of chief minister N Biren Singh himself.
It said that the chief minister’s statement was irresponsible and despiteful, and therefore unsolicited of the chief minister, especially in a state like Manipur where communal tensions are already woefully on the rise, and oddly since the dawn of present ministry.
Moreover, as opposed to CM’s statement, the region is densely forested and respectably environmentally conscious and conscientious let alone if it engages in poppy cultivation or not, it stated and added that CM Biren Singh, therefore, making such a malignant statement is acutely hurtful to the sentiments of the people and therefore irremissible – only showing his bigotry against the tribals in general and the people of the region in particular.
It continued that it is as well inexplicable as to why the chief minister must inculpate the people instead of responsibly acting on the calamity adding that the landslide not only cut a section of the road but also destroyed a large portion of the paddy fields in the area.
Moreover, the recent landslide is the third time occurrence of such landslides in the region and it is therefore sharply disquieting why the CM does not come forward as the people’s CM and provide relief for the affected people instead of his mindless upbraiding against the whole region, it added.
It also said that it will be most prudent and proper for CM Biren Singh to tender a public apology to the people of Kangpokpi District in general and to the people of T Vaichong in particular for his tactless remarks and failing otherwise will only heighten the suspicion and antagonism against his government – an utter shame for the people’s CM.