IMPHAL, March 27 (NNN): The passive way of approaching things in an attempt to get their problems addressed by the people living along the IT Road and Tamei subdivision under Tamenglong district seems to be the reason for their woes to get compounded.
The IT Road, the sole transport link to the outside world for the people of Tamei subdivision and major chunk of Sadar Hills, is one of the oldest roads of Manipur but it is arguably the most deplorable and dangerous road for the people to use.
Bus owners and taxis are reluctant to ply along the IT Road as there is no business benefit. Every third day of plying along the road, the vehicles are found dumped in motor workshops. Those few buses that are in service along the IT Road are actually rendering a humanitarian job.
From Imphal till Tamei headquarters, the distance is 115 kilometres.
During the dry season, the transporters experience the ordeal of bumpsraggedness and dust. One cannot drive faster than 10 kilometres per hour.
During the raining season, worries of the drivers are numerous—-the landslides, to push off the half-buried wheel vehicle from the muddy and slippery potholes, to navigate between boulders of the fresh slides and of course, the extra-careful handling of steering wheel when a vehicle negotiates along the narrow road with one side is the deep gorge.
Every year numerous lives have been claimed by accidents caused by bad road condition and yet the people depending on this road have no complaints. Except occasional appeals by certain groups through the media requesting the government to repair the road, no physical pressure tactics are practised as have been done by others elswhere to address their plights.
The accidents continue to occur, more lives will lose and transporters patience is being tested to the limit but no social organisations nor pressure groups worth their names have pulled up their loins to shoulder the aam admi woes.
