Guwahati: The Assam government Wednesday signed an agreement with regional carrier FlyBig Airline to transport stranded passengers in the Barak Valley, which has been disconnected with the rest of the state due to flood and landslides, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
After chairing a meeting of the state cabinet, Sarma said at a press conference that an MoU has been signed with the airline to run special flights between Silchar and Guwahati at a fixed rate of Rs 3,000 per ticket.
“They will operate these flights for the next 10 days and we hope that everyday 70-100 stranded passengers will avail the service. The additional cost will be taken care of by the government as subsidy to the airline,” he said.
In the wake of the inclement weather across several parts of the northeast, the cost of flight tickets soared to around Rs 30,000 a seat between Silchar and Guwahati instead of the usual Rs 3,000 fare.
On reinstating communication with southern Assam, he said the rail link will take around 45 days to be restored, while road connectivity will be up and running in the next two-three days.
“Today, we air-dropped 4 metric tonnes of food in Dima Hasao. We plan to air-drop 12 MT of food items in the district tomorrow. Our ministers are on the way to Dima Hasao to oversee relief and rehabilitation operations,” Sarma said.
He also stated that families of the deceased will get a compensation of Rs 4 lakh as per the government policy.
The chief minister said Rs 150 crore has been released to the districts, while the Centre sanctioned Rs 1,000 crore for Assam as part of flood relief measures.
The flood situation in Assam deteriorated on Wednesday with one more person losing his life and over 6.62 lakh people getting impacted in the deluge across 27 districts.
Earlier during the day, Sarma held a meeting via video-conferencing with his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma, and appealed to him to facilitate smooth movement of relief goods and materials from Assam to the flood-hit Barak Valley districts through roads passing through the hill state.
Sangma assured the Assam government of all support and cooperation in this regard.
In another meeting chaired by Sarma on the flood scenario, directions were issued to the officials concerned to ensure there is no shortage of essential commodities in the flood-hit districts.
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