Is there a system of accountability by which consumers can get their rights redressed without going through the rigmarole of a legal or quasi-legal process such as a consumer court? Citizens pay direct and indirect taxes for every product they purchase and this includes electricity which has become a scarce commodity in Meghalaya. In the city of Shillong citizens complain of frequent power outages, sometimes as many as a dozen times in a single day. Their electrical and electronic gadgets are at risk of going kaput but the Meghalaya Electric Corporation Limited (MeECL) headed by bureaucrats who do not have the faintest idea of generating profits on which to run the Corporation and to sustain it, don’t care a hoot! This has gone on for decades and Government continues to pump in good money into an evidently failed project because it has not exercised its mind on how to re-energize this monolithic institution. Also politicians have vested interests in retaining the MeECL so they can push in their kin to be employed there despite the glut in the job market. After its corporatization, MeECL ought to have been run as a profit-making entity but apart from the change of name from a Board to a Corporation, it is run like any other Government Department without any system of accountability or performance evaluation which are critical factors in a profit-making corporate.
Today the MeECL does not have the capacity to provide intermittent power to the people of Meghalaya, so all talk of energy- driven entrepreneurships and software industries is bogus. There’s a huge gap between the idealism of the Government and the ground realities. Also this Government has its share of favoured bureaucrats who manage to get quiet extensions away from the public eye and whose ability to deliver even while they were in active service is highly suspect. It has been stated times without number that the MeECL needs a complete make-over with a robust business model which the Government is ill equipped to come up with. It’s high time the MeECL is divested and the private sector brought in, else, public money which could have gone into other more productive projects such as health and education is being sunk in to the MeECL, with much of that money leaking into private pockets of engineers and contractors. The nexus is deep and insidious. The power situation is far worse in the villages where people have no voice or political clout. Will the people of Meghalaya continue to tolerate this top-heavy, irresponsible loss-making Corporation which, while charging the public a hefty power tariff is unable to deliver energy efficiently? Time to hold the MeECL to account through a public hearing!