Shillong: In order to fill in the gap of the deficiency in the transport system, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Friday informed that the government is working towards expansion of the Meghalaya Integrated Transport Project (MITP).
The chief minister said it is necessary to look at different aspects of transport while planning this project and it will be rolled out in four phases.
In the first phase, the government will roll out electric buses for general public transport. “We will start with the first phase where we take few buses and we will see how the process moves forward,” said Sangma.
In the second phase, the government will provide non electric buses to different schools to be used as school buses.
“This will not necessarily be run by the schools but the concerned department nodal agency will work out a formula. We will have some kind of organization society or people who run it. We will work the system out but the idea is to introduce school buses and to allow traffic decongestion to take place because of the number of individual vehicles that go and pick up the students,” mentioned Sangma.
He said the government has also realized that the schools don’t want to run the bus service, so they are looking at an innovative model where a third party will run this system.
In the third phase of this MITP expansion project, they will be giving out close to 200 SUVs to entrepreneurs at a 50% subsidy from the government of Meghalaya.
“50% will be subsidized by us and we will give it to the youth and tourist operators, whoever wants to apply for this. We will allow them and we will promote these high-end vehicles to be used for tourists. We feel that there is a bit of a gap… we are looking at high-end tourists. But we don’t have that kind of vehicles because our entrepreneurs and our taxi drivers cannot afford it,” said Sangma.
He added that they want to support them in order to bring up the level of luxury tourism in the sector.
In line with the 1917 prospect, which is used for transportation of agricultural products, the government is expanding this proposal where 200 pickup trucks will be bought and distributed to different entrepreneurs, farmers organizations or societies.
“Here also 50% of this will be subsidized by government of Meghalaya and 50% by the entrepreneur or farmers organization. There will be banking loans, so that the farmer or the individual does not feel the pressure,” he added.
This will be the first phase and if the government sees that the response is positive and the system is falling into place, they intend to expand it further and give more school buses, more electric buses, more high-end luxury vehicles for tourist operators and entrepreneurs who wish to run these services.
The chief minister informed that this process will take a month to 45 days to be rolled out. Sangma also mentioned that the purpose is to fill in the gap in the transport system.
The government also aims to increase opportunities for tourist operators, drivers and entrepreneurs who would like to come into this, provide jobs for the youth and increase the overall quality of experience for the tourist.
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