SHILLONG:
In view of the large number of vacancies in the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL), the Coordination Committee of Registered MeECL (Employees) Associations and Unions (CCORMAU) has urged the government to revoke the ban on recruitment in the corporation.
The CCORMAU, which met the deputy chief minister in charge power to discuss an array of issues on June 13, said that the minister has assured the coordination committee that the government is in the process of lifting the ban.
“We are very happy to say that the minister has already taken steps in this direction…for revocation of this order,” said CCORMAU president P Shullet, adding that the issue was discussed as prior to the order, MeECL had the autonomy to conduct job recruitment on its own.
Shullet also informed that subsequent to the order, there are large numbers of vacancies at the field level, jugalis, technicians, junior engineers and assistant engineers, among others. “These are important posts in MeECL, which is purely a technical organization,” he said.
Besides, the CCORMAU president also informed that the delegation had also sought the deputy chief minister’s intervention to regularise contractual employees of the MeECL.
Informing that there are over 1700 contractual employees, who comprise about 30-40 per cent of the manpower of the MeECL and have been serving for more than 20 years, Shullet said, “They are still getting paid a meagre amount of Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. This is inhumane and the minister also agreed to it. He (Tynsong) had initiated some steps in this direction and we welcome it. It is in the process and we look forward that in due course of time, this will be taken care of.”
Meanwhile, the CCORMAU also requested the state government to consider allotting projects to the MeECL.
“We know the potential of the state is more than 3,000 megawatt (MW) but only about 10-15 per cent of that has been harnessed till date. We want to go back to those good old days of the erstwhile MeSEB when we used to have surplus of power and even sell power to neighbouring states,” he said, adding that the deputy chief minister said that he has been mulling about that possibility for a while.