Pynursla: Meghalaya Speaker, Donkupar Roy, education minister Lahkmen Rymbui and member of district council from Nongshken constituency Grace Mary Kharpuri were stranded along with other officials and hundreds of villagers following a landslide near Pynursla in East Khasi Hills district on Thursday.

Roy, Rymbui, and Kharpuri were on their way to attend a school function at Umñiuhtmar village close the Indo-Bangladesh border, about 25km from here, around 76km from Shillong.

According to the villagers, the landslide occurred early in the morning at Mawkyrnot village, about 4km from Pynursla, the headquarters of Pynursla sub-division.

Patients and villagers who brought agricultural produce to be sold at Pynursla, Thursday being market day, were stranded on the road for hours as it took a long time for the PWD (roads) staff to come and clear the debris that had blocked the entire road.

A Shillong Public Transport Service bus (ML01-7424) of the state government that tried to pass through a narrow lane at the landslide spot, added to the woes of the villagers as it got stuck.

The driver of the bus was nowhere to be found when hundreds of stranded villagers wanted to push the bus so that smaller vehicles could pass through.

The villagers informed officers at Pynursla civil subdivision several times, but to no avail.

Kharpuri, who arrived at the spot around noon before the arrival of the Speaker and education minister, rushed back to the PWD office at Pynrusla and sought the immediate intervention of the officials.

Many parents who were to take their ailing children to doctors at Pynursla had to walk, while many villagers had to lug their goods till Pynursla.

The Speaker, who arrived at the spot around 12.20pm, called up an executive engineer of the PWD (roads) and directed him to act immediately since hundreds of people were stranded for many hours. Later, Roy, Rymbui, Kharpuri and other officials and mediapersons boarded passenger vehicles and reached Umñiuhtmar.

At the function, Roy, Rymbui and Kharpuri inaugurated a newly constructed building of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Higher Secondary School, Umñiuhtmar, a school run by the community under the management of the Dorbar Elaka Umñiuhtmar.

The school was established in 1983 and became the first school in the area to be upgraded to a higher secondary one with arts stream. The first academic session of Class XI (arts) will commence this month. The debris was later cleared by PWD workers, and the road was restored for traffic after 3pm.