Mukul had announced Rs 750 crore in 2010
SHILLONG: The Joint Action Committee of Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) has sought to know the status of the one-time bailout package the government announced on March 31, 2010, prior to the corporatisation of erstwhile Meghalaya State Electricity Board (MeSEB).
The general secretary of MeECL joint action committee, Arju Dkhar, said on Monday the bailout package was for Rs 750 crore towards employees’ corpus as announced by Mukul Sangma when he was the Deputy Chief Minister in charge Power.
Moreover, Arju said the pensioners’ dues were not cleared by the government for the last two years.
However, the committee appreciated the recent cabinet decision to make Meghalaya Power Distribution Corporation Limited (MePDCL) viable under the Centre’s Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY).
It was on March 7 that the State cabinet decided that the government will share 75 per cent of the total outstanding debt of MePDCL to facilitate a tripartite agreement involving the Centre, the State and the distribution company (discom). The discom in the case of Meghalaya is MePDCL. The purpose was to help the State in getting additional and priority funding under UDAY, the initiative of the Power Ministry and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
However, before signing of the agreement, the government was required to take over 75 per cent (Rs 125 crore) of the total outstanding of MePDCL with September 2015 as the cut-off year.
UDAY is the financial turnaround and revival package for electricity distribution companies of India (discoms) initiated by the Centre to find a permanent solution to the financial mess that the power distribution is in.
