City teems with floating people, GMC has no count

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Feb 28: Guwahati is teeming with floating people, including immigrants! They are ‘floating’ as they move from place to place frequently, in search of work. Oddly enough, neither the GMC nor the GDD has information on such people like their population and whereabouts. There has been no survey on the floating population of Guwahati.

In a city where frauds, robbers, looters, burglars and others are on the prowl making the residents of the city pass sleepless nights, vital information on the number of floating people and their whereabouts are a must. However, Guwahati is such a metropolitan city where there is no vital information regarding its floating population.

This startling fact was revealed in the Assam Assembly today when GDD Minister Himanta Biswa replied to a question raised by BJP MLA Siddhartha Bhattacharya. Along with a lot of other information, Bhattacharya wanted to know the number of floating population of Guwahati who commute to the city for jobs or other purposes every day.

Replying to the query, minister Sarma said: “No survey has been carried out by the GMC regarding floating population in Guwahati. However, as per the master plan of Guwahati Metropolitan Area 2025 adopted by GMDA the floating population of the city is taken as 10 per cent of its total population. According to the provisiol census reports of India, the population of Guwahati in 2011 was 8,09,895.”

Replying to other questions, Sarma said that civic amenities like waterways, toilets, sitting arrangements, children’s play equipments, landscaping, environmental lighting etc., have been provided in parks being maintained by the GMDA. Besides these, he said, other facilities are being provided in the city by other parks. “In the past five years, special care has been taken to provide toilets for women in all the toilets constructed by the GMC,” Sarma said, and added that the civic body has plans to construct more public amenity centres in Guwahati on the basis of availability of land. He said that at present two public toilets – one at Panbazar and the other at Bhangagarh flyover – are under construction. This apart, he said, the GMC has plans to construct public toilets at Paltan Bazar, Chabipool, under Six Mile flyover and opposite to B Baruah Cancer Hospital in PPP mode, subject to availability of land.