Shillong, Jan 23: Power Minister Abu Taher Mondal on Thursday said there is no attempt on the part of the State government to privatise the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL).

His statement came after a delegation of the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) sought clarification on the issue.

“As far as the issue of privatisation of MeECL is concerned, as of now there is nothing like that that we are going to privatize the MeECL,” Mondal told reporters after the meeting.

“We are working to see that MeECL overcomes all the difficulties that it is facing and its financial position is better. As per the consumer’s related issue on distribution, transmission and generation also is energized so that MeECL is in a better position,” he said.

The minister informed that it is a fact that earlier four sub-divisions were given to two franchisees – one is Chicomputers which is looking after Dalu and FEDCO which is looking after Phulbari, Nangal and Mawsynram.

“As of now, the performance of the Chicomputers are very good. They don’t have any pending dues. But we are a little bit worried as far as FEDCO is concerned because dues are pending and we have issued show cause notice to the extent of taking legal action against them or may be terminating them. All these things are going on but these things are only for collection of bills,” he said.

Regarding the issue of smart meters, Mondal said that this is the mandate of the union government and ministry of power to provide smart meters to every state and all states are going ahead with the project. “So also we are also following the directives of the power department,” he added.

Asked, the minister said, “That is true even if we raise this issue in the national conference of power ministers that the rates which have been given by the union government must be much lower. We have gone twice for the bidding and both the times the rates came higher.
We have written to the concerned nodal agency from the government of India and they told us to go ahead.”

“We are in touch with AG also so we will be writing to the government of India on whether to go ahead or not and on that basis accordingly we will see,” he added.

Earlier while speaking to reporters, KHNAM working president Thomas Passah said, “We have been informed that the state government is moving ahead to privatise the power sector in the state. We know that the government has privatised three centres.
We do not want that idea to privatise the whole power sector in the state to a private company as we fear that the consumers of the state will then have to bear a big burden financially if the power sector is privatised henceforth.”

“The minister has assured that in the past the four sub-stations have been privatised by the state but they have observed three of the sub-stations which have been privatized are not being able to deliver good service to the consumers and the government is rethinking about these three sub-stations. We were assured that there is no attempt to privatise the power sector in the state,” he stated.

He informed that the delegation had also raised issues regarding the rates of smart meters.

Also Read: Meghalaya launches QR code-enabled textbooks to bridge urban-rural divide

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