Things seem to have reached their nadir as far as the MeECL is concerned. Never before have pensioners been denied their dues or staff salaries been delayed. However, this is not a sudden development. Over the years the debt burden of the MeECL has only piled up with no serious thought given to pull up the straps of this major public sector undertaking (PSU). The MeECL has vast assets which could have been judiciously capitalised towards building up its liquidity. But, record keeping of all government assets, particularly land holding are inefficiently done. If truth be told then government itself is not fully aware of the assets that it holds as a public trust. MeECL has over the years become an employment agency. The number of employees in the clerical cadre is more than what a corporation the size of the MeECL actually requires. The problem with Meghalaya is that we don’t have corporate giants setting up shop here which would have been good models of how profit-making corporations/companies are run and managed. Every employee is judged by his/her performance. The call is clear – perform or perish. Is the MeECL run that way? Also, the principle of every profit-making industry is, “lean and mean.” The MeECL is neither lean nor mean and cannot afford to do so because it would lose the goodwill of its staff and vote-banks will be affected.
Like every government owned PSU the MeECL has not learnt the hard lesson that unless it makes profit from the whole business of power generation, transmission and distribution then it cannot continue to pay its employees or run the industry. A corporation is meant to be a profit-making entity but a state-owned corporation has the luxury of government pumping in funds every now and again or government standing surety for loans availed by the corporation.
What’s evident is that all public sector undertakings whether those are run by the state or central government are floundering under colossal debt burdens. Air India is a fine example of how bad management has ensured that profit-making routes are sold out to private players even while the national carrier does all those routes that private airlines would not touch with a bargepole. In the 1990’s there was a proposal to privatise the MeSEB. Private parties including foreign bidders had expressed interest in the corporation then but politics prevented any pragmatic decision –making and that’s how far we have arrived today.
It’s time for the State Government to get out of the denial mode and start exploring opportunities for tuning up the MeECL and turning it into a modern, progressive power producing industry through better management. That will cause some pain but does Government have a choice?