Silchar, Nov. 26: The first food-processing park of the Northeast will come up in Mizoram in three years’ time.

The industrial park will have 21 food-processing units and the expenses, estimated to be Rs 8.06 crore, will be borne evenly by the Centre and the Mizoram government. The site chosen for the park is at Chhingchhip village, near the capital town of Aizawl.

A senior official told The Telegraph from Aizawl that Rs 2 crore had already been released to the Mizoram Food Processing Corporation for the first phase of the project. He said about 800 skilled and unskilled youths would get jobs at the project site.

Noodles, cakes, squash, jam, pork products and processed horticulture items will be churned out at the industrial park for domestic consumption as well as export to adjacent Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The park will have a cold storage unit, some medium-sized warehouses and a quality-testing and analysis laboratory, the official said.

Hindi education: The Mizoram government has decided to make Hindi a compulsory subject in classes IX and X of all English and Mizo-medium schools in the state.

Higher and technical education secretary L. Tochhawng said Hindi had already been made a compulsory subject for students of classes V to VIII. Mizoram has a population of over 8.5 lakh and 1,416 trained Hindi teachers. Tochhawng said a reorientation course for Hindi teachers of government schools in the state was held in Aizawl recently under the stewardship of parliamentarian Rajnath Singh Surya and the vice-chairman of the Kendriya Hindi Shikshan Mandal.

Scribes harassed: Armed militants stopped newspersons on duty several times at different places along the Imphal-Jiribam National Highway 53 recently and grilled them, reports PTI. At some interior places, they even demanded money from them.