SHILLONG:
National People’s Party (NPP) State President WR Kharlukhi, on April 19, said that the power crises in Meghalaya is due to demand and supply, wherein utility consumption is very high but production has not been as per requirements.
Deliberating on solutions to stop the recurring problem of power supply, he said that Meghalaya is a state which should never have power crises given the potential of the state to generate electricity in excess to what is required.
“When we are talking about power today, Meghalaya has the capacity of generating more than 4000 Mega Watts of power, and today we generate only 200 Mega Watts whereas the requirement is 700 MW, what is the problem? Government is trying to build up dams, but people are opposing it, so we have to educate them on the basic necessity that is power and how the state can become self-sufficient and also supply power to other states once these hydel projects are set up.,” he said
He said that whenever the government tried, people objected, and this is the basic reason why the untapped power potential of Meghalaya is not being utilised.
The NPP state president also pointed to other factors such as technical snags at various power stations, revenue leakages and other reasons for the frequent power cuts.