UPORKHUTI, Feb 17 ? Several villages viz Betagaon, Jabarangpara, Suwagpur, Kauli, Bholajhar, Bongalipara, Upor-khuti, Bogamati etc mainly located in the foothills of the Bhutan border falling under the jurisdiction of Nalbari and Kamrup districts, 25 km away from Goreswar have remain underdeveloped since indepen-dence. Numerous problems plague the area inhabited by people of various communities like SCs, STs, OBC, Adivasis, Bengalis, Nepalis and others.
On many occasions, applications and memorandums have been submitted to the concerned authorities and the local MLAs of Tamulpur and Rangia LACs from time to time for developing this area, but they have not yielded any results, according to Dhanpati Rabha, gaonburah of Betagaon village. For instance, pure drinking water supply scheme, ?Health for all 2000? rural electrification, rural communication etc, have not made any presence till date. Similarly, the vast area is also backward in education and agriculture.
In the name of education, there is a non provincialised high school ? Betna Defeli Milan High School established in 1986 and a few LP schools in a ramshackle condition in No. 1 Betagaon and Jabarangpara villages. There are no irrigation schemes for cultivating seasonal crops although 90 per cent of the villagers are dependent on agriculture. Moreover, herd of wild elephants regularly come down to the paddy fields from the Bhutan hills and unleash total havoc. Thus, the villagers are suffering a lot economically also.
The Tamulpur SDO of ASEB has been supplying electricity to only 12 families out of the 722 families. Though the only PWD road that runs from Tamulpur to Naokata has been completed with blacktopping by the Border Road Organisation (BRO), the RCC bridges over the rivers ? Baralia, Puthimari and Sukla have yet to have the constructions started.
The village commuters thus have to cross these rivers by ferries paying Rs 5-10 per head per trip. The local MLA of Tamulpur, Biswajit Daimary has failed to mitigate the problems of the locality till date.The people of the area said that they had procured a transformer from the Tamulpur SDO, ASEB office for Rs 11,000 in 1993 to mitigate the problem of power supply in this vast area, yet no steps have been taken in this regard till now.
The Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) scheme has also not been executed completely. Only five houses under this scheme had been completed at Mulabari village under Goreswar block development office during the tennure of the AGP government while the present Congress (I) government has failed to implement this scheme totally. There is no provision of medical treatment in the vast malaria-prone area. The Naokata Mini PHC located 12 km away at Naokata is the nerve centre for treatment of the poor patients of this Bhutan bordering area with the result that the people have to face a lot of problems in this regard.