The Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) has refused to pay retired employees their monthly pension, claiming that a recent order of the Meghalaya State Electricity Regulatory Commission (MeSERC) has forbidden it, quoting technical reasons.
The commission’s reason is that the pension amount was not calculated into the tariff formula for the year 2017-18. Pensioners have not received their benefits for April, it has been learnt.
Sources said these recurring problems are due to the negligence of the state government in implementing the statutory obligations once the state electricity company had been corporatised. The various units the utility was broken up into were to start with zero debt but this was never implemented. Knowledgeable sources said that the MeECL was also obligated to set up a pension trust fund but that was pushed aside over the years.
With this background of the failure of the state government to give the MeECL a proper start-off, it is wrong to blame the pensioners for seeking their hard-earned retirement benefits, said sources.
But the decision not to pay the pensioners was allegedly taken unilaterally by the Chairman-Managing Director, Arun Kumar Kembhavi, without discussing the issue with the other directors, sources said.
It is claimed that he also dashed off a letter to the Power Secretary asking the government to pay the monthly salary and other terminal benefits, to arrange payment towards the MeECL pension trust and to direct the MeSERC to allow the same expenditure in the tariff.
