Lower Chinhan village is located about 58 km from Khonsa town in Lazu circle of Tirap District and shares an international boundary with Myanmar. There are 163 households with a total population of 813 people. It is one of the most remote villages in Tirap district and is inhabited by Olloh tribe. The village comes under NERCORMP project in the year 2014. The Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercise was conducted in the village to list out priorities of different development activities. During the exercise, the villagers identifed suspension bridge across the Sumhak river as one of the priority activity to be taking up in the village as this route is the life line of the village. This is the only route used by the villagers to go to Lazu and Khonsa for buying essential household items and other personal works. During rainy season (June-September) the villagers were facing very hard time to cross the river as the water volume of the river is huge and water flow current is very strong to cross it. So every year, the villagers build a temporary suspension bridge with bamboo structure to cross the river.
In the Financial Year 2015-2016, the project provided financial support to Meen-Ho-Jo NaRMG to build a permanent structure of steel suspension bridge across the Sumhak river. The designed of the bridge structure was provided by the PWD department. Mr. Linkwang Lowang, Assistant Engineer along with PTO conducted site survey and measured the length of the suspension bridge at 35 metres. The construction work started in the month of November 2015 and it takes 13 and half months to complete the work. The total cost of the construction of the bridge was at Rs.14,13,800/- including Rs.4,34,00/- as community contribution. The bridge was inuguarated on 9th March, 2018 by Shri. Hakresha Kri, EAC, Khonsa, Tirap district in the presence of Shri. Ruzing Bellai, District Project Director, NERCORMP-Tirap and Longding.
With the building of permanent structure steel suspension bridge through financial support from NERCORMP-Tirap and Longding, the villagers are now finding a great relieve and secured their safety in crossing the river. Also, the yearly labour investment in building new bamboo structure can be used for other productive works.
Shri Hakreshi Kri, EAC congratulated the NERCORMP team and village leaders of Lower Chinhan for successfully taking up such developmental work in this remote village and thanked the villagers particularly the NaRMG leaders and village chief and GB for putting their hard labour and successfully built the bridge in spite of great difficult terrain in the area. Because of this initiative, the village community are getting benefit of suspension bridge for travelling to district headquarter and other parts of the districts.
