Rebecca Suchiang CMD of MeECL

Shillong Today
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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.