By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, March 26: Hirimbapur, four km from Dispur in the Kahilipara area, is a hamlet among the numerous areas in West Guwahati Legislative Assembly Constituency (LAC) where the local people have never heard the footfall of Congress MLA Hemanta Talukdar in the past five years. There are also many residents in the area who have never seen their local MLA. Assam is such a place where a ‘voter’ never seeing his ‘representative’ who he voted to power is not considered a matter to be surprised at.
Hirimbapur has some 300 families comprising Bodos, Nepalis, Bengalis and others. Problem-ridden is not the word that can describe the very condition which the people of the locality have been in for years. Barring electricity, they are out-and-out off the grid. Potable water for them of something like – so near yet so far. Despite being very close to Dispur, the area is beyond the reach of any of the water supply projects functioning in the city. The people there have to pay through the nose for water. They buy water at the rate of Rs 300/400 per 500 litres. Those who cannot afford to buy water have to collect water from far off streams, a practice not free from ailments. Some of the residents have wells that have gone dry now. Of late, Guwahati MP Bijaya Chakraborty bored a well in the area with her MP Local Area Development (MPLAD) Fund, but the work is still underway.
Only 500 metres of the main road to Hirimbapur has been blacktopped, that too, without any draige system. During the rainy reason red soil covers the road from the surrounding hills and makes life hellish. None of the bye-lanes in the area is blacktopped. Taking patients to health facilities located far away is a major problem. There is no way out but to piggyback patients. The streets are without streetlights.
MLA Hemanta Talukdar is not the only one who has discarded the people of this hamlet. GMC has also neglected them by not providing any facilities that are being provided by the civic body. The hamlet falls under GMC Ward No. 27.