Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has strongly urged the authorities concerned to find a way out of the unfortunate impasse involving the Nagaland Foothills Road Coordination Committee (NFHRCC) and contractors vis-à-vis the Foothills Road, preferably and rightly with the active involvement and stewardship of the NFHRCC as well as other similarly affected civil societies, rather than without.
In a statement, NPCC said the differences that arose between various stakeholders of the Foothills Road project under Wokha jurisdiction following the refusal of two firms to sign implementation agreements with the NFHRCC seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, if the ongoing public war of words between the NFHRCC and PWD (R&B) was any indicator.
NPCC cautioned that the discord, if not addressed immediately, could very well end up imperiling the implementation of the Foothills Road project, thereby dashing the hopes and prayers of the people who were deeply invested in this historic initiative.
It emphasised that the need of the hour was initiation of corrective measures based on consensus-building exercises with all stakeholders, adding that PWD (R&B)’s attempts to disown and delink NFHRCC from the project by likening it to an uninvolved and uninvested third party should have been the last thing on the agenda in pursuance of the cause.
NPCC said the immense contribution of the NFHRCC, and the pivotal role that it had played in the realisation of this extraordinarily-unprecedented collective people’s project throughout the last many years was well acknowledged and mandated by the people of Nagaland.
Hence, it stressed that any effort to take away the moral stakeholdership of the NFHRCC from this endeavour would not only be untenable but also self defeating.
Secondly, a perusal of the implementation agreement which was at centre of the present discord clearly established the fact that it was coming from a place of constructiveness and accountability, with the central aim of ensuring quality control and timely completion of the project.
According to NPCC, NFHRCC’s insistence on signing the implementation agreement by the contractors was all the more validated by the many instances of unfinished and unexecuted projects by the government of the day in its long history of utter corruption and misgovernance.