A section of the Shopping Complex and Parking Plaza at Forest Colony, Dimapur which has been lying unutilised. (Photo Courtesy: RPP)
Dimapur, September 27 (MExN): The Rising People’s Party has demanded that the Nagaland Government hand over the ‘Shopping Complex and Parking Plaza’ at Forest Colony, Dimapur to the state’s entrepreneurial community.
In a press statement on Monday, the party, citing information received through an RTI, said that the state Planning and Co-ordination department/State Planning Board conceptualized and built the complex in Forest department land. The complex was constructed at a cost of Rs 43 crore with funding from the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO), it said.
Expressing doubt over the ownership of the complex, the RPP stated that as per the RTI, the Forest department claims that it owns the complex. However, it said that “Nowhere in the world Forest departments/Ministry manages shopping complexes and therefore, it is suspected that the building is already in the hands of a private entity.” It went on to state that the government’s intention was ‘clear and insidious’ right from the beginning and claimed that the powers that be “wanted a private entity to manage the shopping complex as private property, but due to public outcry at that time over the actual ownership of the building complex, it couldn’t be made functional.”
Stating that the complex has grown derelict over the years, the RPP termed the matter as “a powerful example of wastage of public resources.”
Further, the RPP stated that it would continue to oppose any move by the state government to privatize the complex. It also said that it would oppose to the Forest department managing the complex “since the connection between the two is dubious.”
Instead, the RPP demanded that the State Government hand over the management of the complex to the Naga entrepreneurial community by way of signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU).
“Having declared meaningless ‘Year of Farmers’ and ‘Year of Entrepreneurs’ in the past, the government can now actually empower a generation of young entrepreneurs with its concrete action,” the RPP stated while appealing to the Naga entrepreneurial community to take ownership of the issue.
