SHILLONG, June 8: The Coordination Committee of Registered MeECL (Employees) Associations and Unions (CCORMAU) has threatened to file an FIR if the government does not take steps to release the terminal benefits of the corporation’s retired employees.
“We will be compelled to file an FIR against the Chief Secretary, the Secretary of Power department and the CMD of MeECL for failing to take steps to clear the terminal benefits of the retired employees as documented in the MoU,” CCORMAU member, Arju Dkhar warned on Tuesday.
He said the retired employees have not received pension for the past two months and six of them died without receiving terminal benefits.
The CCORMAU said the pensioners, aged 70-90 years, are planning to hit the streets if they do not receive pension before June 15.
“We are going to support our pensioners if they decide on staging a protest against the government’s failure to release their pension,” Dkhar said.
He said the pension corpus has not been honoured by the government.
“We had to serve our retired employees since April 2010 till date for the terminal benefits and monthly pensions of not less than Rs 800 crore. We have paid this amount from our revenue account. We have default in clearing our power dues since we have to take care of the dues of the pensioners,” the CCORMAU member said.
He said they had placed this issue before Power Minister, James Sangma to find out the reason behind the delay.
“I don’t know who is sitting over the corpus fund of Rs 840 crore for 11 years. The actual valuation of it will not be less than Rs 1,500 crore,” Dkhar said.
He said the previous government assured that the terminal benefits will be from April 2014 but this never happened.
“In 2009, there was a move to approach the ADB to create this corpus fund but even this has not materialised till date,” he said.
He expressed concern that the MeECL has been tagged as a foreign company.
“The fact is that MeECL is a 100 per cent government-owned PSU and we are part and parcel of the state government,” Dkhar said.
The Power Minister said it is a very complicated matter.
“All this while, pension was paid from tariff but this was disallowed by the Meghalaya State Electricity Regulatory Commission,” he said.
