Imphal, January 04 01 2010: Although various civil organisations are today contributing their mite in prevention of drug abuse in the State, the Narcotic and Border Affairs (NAB) of the State Government has not been able to play a major role in this regard due to the lack of adequate manpower and other necessary infrastructures.

The apathy of the State Government towards the functioning of NAB is such that its head office at Imphal is currently being run under the supervision of one SP by 29 staff including 4 sub-inspectors, 3 ASIs, 3 head constables, 12 constables and two constable drivers and one clerical staff deputed from other Departments.

Inspite of the importance, there are also no lady constable among the staff of the head office.

In term of vehicles too, the head office has only 3 Gypsies and one mini-Tata truck.

Out of the 3 Gypsies, two have been allotted to the SP and the remaining one to the officer in-charge of the office.

Talking to The Sangai Express, SP of NAB S Amirlal Sharma disclosed that availability of the lone Gypsy allotted to the officer in-charge for use during the time of conducting raids has been causing lot of difficulties.

Apart from the two drug cells of NAB opened at Imphal West and Imphal East police, there are no other cells in the remaining districts of the State.

The one which was opened in Churachandpur had been shut down long ago due to lack of manpower, Amirlal informed, adding that the two existing drug cells in Imphal East and Imphal West Police are being run under the supervision of the respective SPs.

He also disclosed that out of the three categories of drugs namely synthetic drug, semi-synthetic drug and natural drug, abuse of synthetic drugs has been on the rise in Manipur.

Explaining that synthetic drugs like spasmo-proxyvon, diazepam, etc are meant for treatment of patients but they are being abused widely by youngsters in Manipur today while semi-synthetic drugs are those which are grown in nature like Ganja, Poppy plant, etc, Amirlal said that although NAB has been paying serious attention to all kinds of drugs, it has not given the kind of due attention to Alcohol as there is not enough manpower at its disposal and other civil organisations have taken up the cause.

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