The Power Department will consider the regularisation of longstanding contractual workers, who make up 40 per cent of the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Ltd (MeECL) workforce.
This was told to a delegation from the Coordination Committee of Registered MeECL (Employees) Association and Unions (CCORMAU) by Power Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong in a meeting of the two sides today.
Other issues that were discussed included terminal benefits and revocation of the order banning recruitment in MeECL, CCORMAU president PK Shulet told reporters.
Rs 840 crore in terminal benefits are yet to be paid by the government to the MeECL since 2010, which was when the power utility was corporatised.
Because of the ban on recruitment there are a “large number of vacancies in the field level posts of technicians, junior engineers and assistant engineers”, he said.
He informed that the minister has taken steps in this matter and will consider regularisation for contractual employees who have worked at the company for several years, with Shulet saying that having worked for the MeECL for 20 years but only receive a salary of Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 is “inhumane”.
CCORMAU has also requested the government to consider giving more projects to MeECL, seeing that the state has a lot of potential in energy generation that has yet to be realised.
“The potential of the state is more than 3,000 MW but hardly 10-15 percent of that has been harvested today,” Shulet said. “When we have the potential to generate that much power, why are we still languishing?”
