IMPHAL, November 29: The Ministry of External Affairs has okayed the opening of a regional passport office at Imphal. The approval came on November 19, according to minister M Okendro.
Detailing media persons of a cabinet meeting today, Oken further mentioned that the SPF government is fulfilling its promise to the public one step at a time, with Tulihal airport upgraded to international status and post landing of the first flight from Myanmar, the regional passport office will help the public in avoiding the trouble of going to Guwahati for procuring passports.
He stated that the regional office will be opened at the Old Assembly complex and the northern annexure building will serve as a temporary office. The office will be open for public convenience at the soonest, he added.
Further, the National Food Security Act is to be implemented in totality here beginning March, 2014. In the process of that, a regional Food Corporation of India (FCI) office will be opened at the old Assembly secretariat southern annexure building by January 2014. The temporary office will serve for 5/6 months before a permanent location is fixed. At the same time, process is underway to build a rail fed depot with maximum storage capacity, he said.
Oken maintained that, the problems of transporting PDS supplies has been problematic for the state government as the FCI regional office is located at Dimapur, and transport becomes a problem with the strikes and blockades imposed along the NH-2. Opening of the regional office will solve all these problems, he said.
Out of the 12 listed agendas, the state government has extended the removal of disturbed area status from seven municipal constituencies till November 30, 2014. The 6th session of the Tenth Manipur Legislative Assembly sittings is also scheduled to commence from December 18.
Regarding the extension of contractual engagements of persons for various government approved schemes, the cabinet has approved that the contract employees will no longer need to seek financial concurrence from the state Finance Department. The procedure has been exempted and the concerned administrative department will be solely responsible for contract extension and for financial concurrence, Oken said.
The cabinet further agreed to sanction an additional ICDS project within Thoubal district and creation of posts. Oken mentioned that post the cabinet , another meeting was held with all sixty MLAs and the matter was also deliberated with them. The MLAs had also given their approval on the cabinet decision.