Assam Industry Minister Chandramohan Patowary said that Namami Brahmaputra festival is likely to open up a vista of new opportunities for the people of Assam in terms of trade and commerce, employment opportunities, investment and overall betterment of their lives.
Patowary said this while addressing a Press Conference in Guwahati on Tuesday and added that the Assam Government is going to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Centre soon for dredging the nine declared national waterways of Assam apart from dredging the Brahmaputra river.
“The Central Government has already released Rs. 1000 crore for dredging of Brahmaputra river from Sadiya in eastern side to Dhuburi in Western border of the state. We have also planning to dredge the stretch of the mighty river from Dhubri to Bangladesh with the help of Asian Development bank (ADB) so that there can be river transport with Bangladesh,” said Patowary.
He said that the government has also decided to develop the 101 jetties in Assam with modern technology for smooth river transportation and added that efforts are also on to bring back the barges of Assam government which have been in Kolkata. “We have already brought back seven of our barges which were in Kolkata, process is also on to bring back the other 11 barges which will be used for inland water transport in Assam,” he said.
“Our Government has been laying more emphasis in revitalising the inland water transport, which had been largely ignored by past Governments. The Government had also decided to start the service of water taxi from Guwahati to lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International airport. The service will start by this year itself,” he said adding that it takes only 18 minutes from Guwahati to the proposed jetty near the airport,” he said.
It may be mentioned here that Assam has 1,983 kms of waterways and close to 54 lakh people are directly or indirectly dependent on the water ways.
With the Centre notifying nine new waterways in Assam, the overall length of waterways is going to be over 2,500 kms in Assam.
The five day long river festival will be kick started on March 31 by President Pranab Mukherjee and the dignitaries likely to participate in the festival includes Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai lama, Amitabh Bachhan, Prime Minister of Bhutan and many other VVIPs from all the south east asian countries.