The Mawmluh Cherra Cements Ltd started in the MCCL is headquartered in Shillong (Assam). It started commercial cement production in 1966 with capacity of 75,000 million tonnes per year which was later increased to 1,65,000 million tonnes annually. Limestone is available in plenty in the state hence the number of cement companies in East Jaintia Hills alone should be explanation enough that raw material availability and from sources not too far from the cement plant makes cement production a viable proposition in Meghalaya. So why did MCCL fail? The reasons are many and they are the same reasons plaguing the public sector in this country.
Firstly, all these companies are not run my experts but by the bureaucracy without management or corporate affairs training. But more than that all PSUs in Meghalaya are used as employment agencies where politicians who are appointed chairpersons of these PSUs from time to time all push in their camp followers to be employed, without any accountability as to how that would affect the health of the PSU. Such excess manpower is difficult to offload once they are on the payroll of the PSU. MCCL certainly had not made any manpower planning and the bureaucrats and technocrats really have no power to say ‘No’ to meddling politicians. The local people surrounding the MCCL plant inform that even workers who can hardly work and are well past their age of superannuation continue to limp and report for work and no one can tell them to retire. How can any company that must yield profits from production continue to pay non-productive workers? Among the employees that are still on the rolls there is indiscipline in how they report for work and leave the workplace. Employees of MCCL have treated the company like a government service where people’s productivity and outcomes at the lower and mid-level are never measured.
Pricing policy could also be a factor because what’s produced by PSUs are not guided by the principle of profit maximisation. Often pricing is controlled and regulated by the Government. Profitability is affected by another factor. Most public sector enterprises do not follow rational pricing policies. They are not guided by any clear-cut pricing policy. In most cases prices are fixed by departmental directives and ad-hoc piecemeal orders. A PSU requires to be run like a company and that requires efficient managers that are recruited on the basis of special criteria. Such managers then define the roles and responsibilities of subordinate staff and there is constant monitoring and performance evaluation. Such is not the case with PSUs which operate in a ‘go as you please’ environment. However, the closure of MCCL only directly affects a few families whereas the residents around the factory have been breathing easy for many years now since the company ceased production. Pollution in the form of fine dust settles in people’s homes, trees and plants and their rooftops and would also have affected their breathing. The water from the MCCL has also seeped into the Mawmluh cave and caused it’s deterioration. Now the infrastructure created at the MCCL can be utilised for other purposes. Disruption is not always bad!
