By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, May 10: Guwahati is landslide prone, and it is officials. With pre-monsoon rains lashing the city many times by now, how can the Kamrup (M) district administration sit idle? In the event of any disaster, it is the district administration that is blamed on. Taking all such pros and cons into its account, this time around an alert district administration has started sealing houses in the city that are located in landslide-prone areas.
The district administration has already identified areas prone to landslide in the city. Last year, the administration cautioned people living in landslide areas, but there were few takers of the warning. There were landslides and for that the district administration had to take the blame.
Taking cue from the saying ‘prevention is better than cure’, this time around the district administration sealed as many as six houses belonging to five persons located in a landslide-prone area at Kharghuli today. The administration did served notices asking nine families in the area on May 7 to vacate within 72 hours. Two of the families are equipped with stay orders from the court. It remains a mystery as to why the administration prefers to stay away from sealing the houses of two other families that have no stay order from the court.
The five families that were sealed today are of Purkanta Hazarika, Amulya Das, Belitora Das, Lohit Das and Prakash Sarma. Two of the four families – Karu Deka, Mahendra Kalita, Pradip Das and Mun Das – are equipped with stay orders from the court.
The district administration decided to bear the expenditure of the five family members for a fortnight within which they have to make their shelters ready.
Kharghuli is not the only landslide-prone area in the city that has many hilly areas with human habitation in a haphazard way. The administration issuing notices in other landslide-prone areas is likely, and such areas have already been identified.