Correspondent
IMPHAL, OCTOBER 21
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he All Tribal Students’ Union Manipur (ATSUM) has suspended the indefinite bandh on state and national highways, besides national project including railways construction work after they were invited for a talk with the government.
The suspension of the blockade on highways was announced by ATSUM’s president Muan Tombing during a hurriedly called press conference in Imphal on Tuesday. ATSUM President said that the state Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh has invited them for a talk tomorrow morning (8 a.m.).
“We hope that the government will address the demands.So the indefinite bandh on national highways and national project has been suspended after enforcing for nearly 17 hours,”he added. The ATSUM sponsored blockade which started from October 20 midnight, has created artificial scarcity of petrol and desiel in Imphal forcing the locals to buy petrol at Rs 90 a litres.
However in case, if the talk fails to address the demands, ATSUM is ready to launch any form of agitation anytime, warns Muan Tombing.ATSUM has been demanding regularization/appointment of contract graduate teachers (2006 batch), regularization of contract Higher Secondary lecturers, providing proper infrastructure to schools, setting up of B. Ed centres in the hill districts, power bifurcation to separate office of the Additional Directorate of Education (S) Hills etc.
They are also demanding proper functioning and upgradation of the government’s healthcare centres in the hills.
The hill based students’ union also demanded to ascertain the total number of backlog posts in every government department and filling up the vacancies by holding a special recruitment drive for Scheduled Tribes.
Furthermore it demanded effective governance in hill districts to secure proper functioning of the Hill Areas Committee (HAC) and bringing the ADCs in Manipur at par with the ADCs in other North Eastern States, setting up of ST Commission and effective implementation of Tribal Sub-plan are the few demands to mention made by the students’ union.
ATSUM had apprised the Government about their 12 point charter of demands time to time by submitting memorandum.
