SHILLONG, June 27: For weeks now, the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) has been resorting to an unannounced load-shedding due to the shortage of 110 MW of power.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said there are multiple reasons for the sudden power regulation in the state. Three units of national companies from which Meghalaya buys power have not been functioning, leading to the shortfall of 110 MW in the state, he said.
Some units of Meghalaya’s own power projects such as Leshka, Umiam and Umtru are either on periodic maintenance or not functioning. The supply of 42 MW of power from Leshka and 21 MW from Umtru is affected right now, he said.
Advance banking is also creating a shortage of power since Meghalaya had borrowed power from different units during Christmas last year and was to return this power during the rainy season.
“We have to repay around 80 million units of power every month,” he said while admitting that the government is rescheduling the power regulation and trying to adjust.
“We expect some units to start working in a week or two,” Sangma said.
The power regulation across the state capital, usually in the morning and sometimes at night, has made the residents wonder if MeECL was facing a crisis.
Retired bureaucrat Toki Blah said the performance of the MeECL has been deteriorating.
“How do we deal with this white elephant? At this point, I would like to compare MeECL to an old car battery providing very irregular service much to the annoyance of the passengers of the vehicle. Changing the distilled water and energising the old battery by connecting it to stronger batteries from outside has not helped,” he said. Blah said constantly changing the owner (government and Power minister) or the driver (chairman of MeECL) has also not helped.
“Time has come to take some drastic action. Either throw away the battery and get a new one (sell off all MeECL assets, convert all hydro dams into fishery and tourism projects and depend entirely on power supply from the national grid) which would amount to throwing the baby along with the bath water, which is a bad idea. Send the decrepit battery for recharge (which would entail overhauling the entire management together with replacing all old worn-out equipment and replacing it with modern machinery),” he said.
“But this government has never shied away from foreign loans even for absurd projects. No reason to suddenly get coy on this one. Only trouble is to ensure that our sticky-fingered politicians do not get their paws on the money,” he added.
Social worker Naba Bhattacharjee said there has been a policy paralysis in the power sector for the last several decades. He said the demand has increased but no new projects for generation except the floundering Leshka has come up.
“The gap is widening each day while other states have narrowed it. While private industries are generating thermal captive power from coal, this area is also untapped in the public sector. Renewable energy till now has had very little impact. The immediate solution in my opinion is to privatise power distribution in Shillong as done in the nineties with huge success in Delhi, Kolkata etc.,” he said.
Former Home minister RG Lyngdoh said he had thought the electricity problems would be over after the recent rains. He felt the frequent load-shedding could be due to the state’s inability to get power on credit.
“Our production capacity could also not be sufficient to meet the demand for electricity within. If this is true, then the best solution, in the long run, is to increase the production capacity as early as possible. A number of hydro projects have been shelved for reasons best known to the policymakers,” he said.
