Nagaland’s newly formed Kiphire district is staring at an acute food crisis due to landslides blocking all the highways and district roads connecting Kiphire for more than a week now.
The district is slowly running out of essential commodities with little rice and flour left in the shops for sale, reports coming in stated.
Reliable sources from Food and Civil Supplies Department informed that there is hardly few thousand kilos of rice in store and the Department is in a fix as the trucks loaded for Kiphire had to unload the stock at a department godown in Dimapur due to landslides.
With the shops running dry with every passing day, locals of the district are left to the mercy of nature to restore the roads so that goods trucks reach Kiphire on time.
To make matters worse, it is still unclear as to how long it will take to restore the roads.
The administration is now relying on smaller vehicles to ply through the by-passes and carry the goods from the trucks stranded at different places.
Sources from the Kiphire district administration also disclosed that the district is facing acute shortage of fuel.
Though the administration has seized the keys to all the petrol stations, the administration remained concerned that the fuel will run out in a few days.
Notably, an Indian Air Force (IAF) chopper MI17 attempted to drop essential commodities to Kiphire twice but failed both times due to bad weather.
An official release also stated that two sorties with relief consignments were successful at Noksen and one at Tobu on August 5 but could not land in Kiphire due to bad weather.
Meanwhile, the 7 Assam Rifles led by Lt Col U K Pandey on Sunday handed over 1500 kg rice, 100 kg dal, 150 litre mustard oil, 100 kg sugar, 20 kg milk and 20 kg tea leaves as relief material to the district administration.