MEGHALAYA Home Minister Robert G Lyngdoh has said the State Government was spending Rs five lakh a day for providing relief to Khasi-Pnars living in different camps in the Jaintia Hills district. ‘’The State Government is spending at least Rs five lakh a day to provide 4,000-odd people bare essentials,’’ Lyngdoh said and dismissed media reports that refugees were kept in ‘inhuman’ conditions.

Lyngdoh said, after finding out from the district administration that only rice was being provided to the reguees, he had asked the officials to give them potatoes and dal and medicines, temporary electricity connection and drinking water. Doctors were also being sent there, he claimed. Underlining the urgency of sending them back to their own land, the Home Minister said if they could not go back now they would not harvest for the entire season. ‘’How will they survive the rest of the year,’’ he said. The people had come in batches since November from neighbouring Assam’s Karbi Anglong district to the Jaintia Hills following harassment and threats by two militant groups over a boundary dispute.

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