| Highway to hell
Once again Manipur is faced with the same predicament of fuel shortage and if Chief Minister Okram Ibobi and his Council of Ministers do not sit down and seriously try to work out a solution then the same nightmare which besieged the State in the early part of 2001 may be repeated again. Already a number of petrol pumps have gone dry and save for the clarification issued by the police Department that they are ready to detail security escorts to the oil tankers nothing concrete has come from the side of the Government.
True, Ibobi and the leadership of the Secular Progressive Front may be pre-occupied with the upcoming Rajya Sabha election but this cannot be the excuse for the Government to sleep over the threat looming ahead. The genesis of the refusal of the oil tankers to take the road stems from the attack on the security escorts on NH-39 on March 27 and their demand from the Government is adequate security cover and full responsibility to be borne by the authority in case of any eventuality.
From the side of the police the story is clear. The State Police Department has already said that they are ready to provide security escort but the hitch is the refusal of the FCS drivers to ferry the security personnel. Given the fact that the State Police force is already stretched to the limit it would be unreasonable to expect the Police Department to provide the vehicles of the security personnel and one of the Government departments has to bear the responsibility of providing the vehicles which the FCS Department had been doing so far before the March 27 attack.
The reason behind the refusal of the FCS drivers to take the wheel has also been spelt out and it would pay dividends for the Government to listen to their grievances and see what can be done to assuage their misgivings.
In a nutshell the whole issue boils down to the question of providing security along the two national highways which have for long been abused. While road communication and national highways are essentially meant to connect places and help in transporting goods and people and thereby provide assistance in economic activities, ironically in Manipur NH-39 and NH-53 have for long been used as bargaining tools by sections of the people.
Nothing could be more harmful and dangerous than this. While it is the duty of the Government and the authority to provide security along the highway it is also the reciprocal duty of the citizens to see that the highways are not abused to get a point across. What we are talking about here is the fate of the whole population of the State and no one should have the impunity to hold the whole population to ransom through the lifelines of the State.
The stretch between Imphal and Dimapur has been used too often to extract a pound of flesh and however genuine the grievances of the people concerned may be, there is absolutely no justification to turn the highways into a bargaining tool. Same thing for the Imphal- Moreh route. The people living in close proximity to this route have a moral obligation to check anti-social elements that prey upon passengers.
(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)
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