SHILLONG, MAY 20: Cabinet Minister Marcuise N Marak on Wednesday said the Meghalaya government is adhering to austerity measures requested by the Prime Minister, with Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma asking all ministers to comply.

“With regards to austerity measures that the prime minister has requested all the states, here in our state also chief minister has already requested all the ministers to follow the austerity measures,” Marak told reporters.

Citing his own department, the minister said a planned study tour to the United Kingdom had been shelved.

“For example, I would like to say that I was planning to visit UK with my Soil & Water Conservation team to study the climate change issues and all with regards to implementation of climate adaptive committee based water harvesting project and to study that, we are planning to go to UK,” he said.

“We had sent the request to the chief minister also but because of the Prime Minister’s austerity measure call, we were told not to proceed and we were told to keep it on hold,” Marak stated.

“Therefore, we are not going ahead and we have abided by the request of the chief minister,” he added.