SHILLONG:
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has said that in spite of the challenges the state faces, it can do more.
Speaking on the occasion of the 73rd Republic Day held at Polo Grounds on Wednesday, Sangma said, “We can achieve more, and we should never be satisfied with what we have now, and that is the real challenge.”
The chief minister pointed out that in 2018 when they took over the government they had huge challenges.
“We had a situation where mothers were giving birth to children without any professional help. Fifty per cent of the mothers were giving birth to their children on their own, in their homes,” Sangma said.
He also pointed out that 40 per cent of children did not receive any immunisation and there were less than 30,000 people who were part of different self-help groups.
Also projects in PMGSY, which were due from 2001, were not completed.
“There was a system, a government, a process which was going on, but it was not able to deliver the desired results that we wanted. And hence the challenges and, therefore, we took tough decisions,” the Chief Minister said.
Sangma pointed out that today there are over 28,000 pregnant mothers in the state, at any given time.
“We can exactly tell you under which sub-centre, PHC, or which doctor is taking care of them, which Asha is taking care of them. We can tell you that out of these 28,000 mothers who are pregnant, we can actually tell you that 10-15 percent are high risk mothers, and we know their names, and we follow, we ensure the doctors visit them, the Asha’s visit them special care is given to them and it is, this monitoring that has today helped us to ensure that our institutional deliveries have gone up from 50 percent to 85 percent,” he added.
The chief minister also said that today for every single of the 548 PMGSY projects that are going on, the government can tell at any given time the current status of the road.
“We can actually call up the contractor , which I do, and ask them why the work is going slow, and that today has changed the entire implementation of PMGSY, where we are doing five times more projects than what we had in the last 10 years,” he added.
Sangma said that as a state, it has huge challenges in finance.
Though the state has its own revenue of close to Rs 3,000 crore and the state’s central taxes is of over Rs 5,000 crore coming in, yet additional funds is needed for infrastructure, development and different economic growths.
He  said that this is the reason why the government realised the need to tap the external agencies.
“In 2018, there were Rs 2500-crore worth of projects going on under the externally-aided projects. Today, after we have tapped the external agencies, we have been able to mobilise Rs 7500 crore from external agencies to do huge number of projects in tourism, in water catchment area, natural resource management, road construction, integrated transport system, early childhood development programme, and many other programmes under the externally-aided projects,” he said.
The chief minister said that because of the strong mobilisation that has been done, today, the state government’s expenditure is close to touching Rs 14,000 crore, wherein at a point in 2018, the state was spending less than Rs 9,000 crore.
He pointed out that in a matter of four years that has almost jumped up by 40 per cent and that was only possible because of the mobilisation that has been done through external agencies.