June 28, 2021 - Shillongtoday

Rebecca Suchiang CMD of MeECL

June 28, 2021June 28, 2021 Shillong Today

Govt resorting to load shedding out of compulsion: Mondal

Shillong, Jun 28: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Monday announced the name of Additional Chief Secretary Rebecca V Suchiang as the new Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of the cash-strapped Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL).

Noting that the appointment of a new CMD would not immediately show results “because it is very complicated”, the Chief Minister said, “I have repeated again and again that MeECL has had a lot of difficulties because of whether the unbundling of the companies, the Rs 800 crore terminal benefits to be given to the employees, which again was not given and therefore they have to take from their own revenue, whether it is from the overall payments to be made to different generation companies”.

“So there has been a huge financial burden as I keep repeating that whereas states like Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and others owe nothing to these big companies, they owe only Rs 100 crores, but Meghalaya owes more than 1,000 crore,” he spelt out.

Pointing out that NEEPCO (North East Electric Power Corporation) and the NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) went into financial troubles, Sangma said, “What will a company do when they are in financial troubles, they would look at their biggest dues which happens to be Meghalaya and they would start pressurizing them. It is a natural process, it is the same for us if we have big companies and suddenly MeECL doesn’t have money.”

The Chief Minister also expressed hope that Suchiang would be able to bring in change in the corporation as she is an experienced bureaucrat and hoped that there would be further coordination between the corporation and the Finance department.

“Having said that, I am not saying that the previous functioning of the outgoing CMD was bad or good, it is a tough situation so therefore tough situation will require tough decisions to be taken,” the Chief Minister underscored.

Sangma said that his cabinet colleagues felt that MeECL should be given a chance to try and improve and so Suchiang was brought in considering her experience.

“We expect that MeECL will have a loss of Rs 900 crore this financial year. MeECL is going to inevitably face a very difficult financial situation in the coming 8-9 months, we need a senior person, to be able to steer the ship and closely coordinate with finance and move things forward,” the Chief Minister said.

Mairang district to be functional before 2021 Independence Day

June 28, 2021 Shillong Today

Shillong, Jun 28: Mairang sub-division will be upgraded into a district before Independence Day this year, the state government informed on Monday.

Mairang will be the 12th district of the state.

“Mairang will be the new district of our state and because of Covid-19 the situation has been slightly slow but to let the people know and feel positive about it that we will do our best to ensure that before Independence Day the Mairang district is functional,” he said.

“This has been a genuine demand of the people of Mairang area and adjoining constituencies. Mairang is at the bottom when it comes to sustainable development goals and the main purpose of doing this is to really push the living standard of the people in Mairang and other parts of West Khasi Hills and therefore the need was very justified,” the Chief Minister asserted.

“When we look at the size of West Khasi Hills district and the economic standard of the people, the sustainable development goals, West Khasi Hills has been neglected a lot and to bring development and to raise livelihood of the people which I have been speaking for a very long time – the only way to do is to bring administration closer to the people,” Sangma underscored.

When asked on the demands to upgrade Sohra civil sub-division into a district, the Chief Minister said, “It has been an area of concern. There has been demand for it but because of the geographical landscape and the area of Pynursla and down and the areas across the valley – so the geographical mapping is not coming to a point where we are able to really look at a consensus. So all those issues are being discussed and we will see how to move forward”.

He also informed that there are also similar demands in Garo Hills district.

The Chief Minister informed that Dadenggre sub-division under West Garo Hills district could be carved out to form another district.

Sangma said, “We will examine this proposal. Power Minister (James Sangma) met me a couple of times and demanded for a new district at Dadenggre as West Garo Hills again is a very huge district, but the government has not yet taken any decision.”

Govt constitutes enquiry committee into alleged rice scam

June 28, 2021 Shillong Today

Shillong, Jun 28: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Monday announced an independent inquiry will be conducted into the alleged “rice scam”, where Assam police had seized one lakh bags of rice from a private go-down at Boko in Assam’s Kamrup district.

“In the interest of ensuring that full transparency is there so that the people and the general public are fully satisfied, we will be constituting an enquiry commission into this issue,” Sangma told reporters.

The Chief Minister said that the inquiry committee would be headed by a retired judge and will be given two-three months’ time to submit its report on the matter.

He also informed the process will start within a day or two,

“We want to be very transparent and we want to assure the people that there is no such scam or any kind of misappropriation that is taking place. So for their satisfaction, we are ready and we will be setting up an inquiry into this,” the Chief Minister said.

Meanwhile, Sangma also informed that the members of the independent enquiry committee set up by the government to probe into the alleged irregularities in the MeECL have been selected and a notification will be out soon.

The Chief Minister also said that the government has ensured that the members of the committee were independent.

“The yardstick we followed was not to bring in people who had worked in MeECL in the past or who had worked in other departments since there could be some questioning whether this is truly independent in nature or not. We tried our best to make it truly independent in nature,” Sangma said.

COVID 19 UPDATES: Meghalaya records 336 new positive cases, 508 recovers

June 28, 2021 Shillong Today

‘Covid-19 cases in the state could be upto 25 times the numbers recorded’

Shillong, June 28: Meghalaya on Monday registered 336 new COVID-19 cases, which pushed the tally of active cases to 4,378, the health department said in a bulletin.

Meanwhile, the state also records 508 new recovered cases in last 24 hours, with this the total recovered cases reaches 43,578.

08 more succumbs to the infections in last 24 hours, taking total number of fatalities from COVID-19 infection to 827 so far.