The Meghalaya Energy Corporation Ltd (MeECL) is facing a massive revenue gap between what it earns from consumers and what it has to pay out in costs and the only solution might be to raise the tariff, United Democratic Party (UDP) general secretary Jemino Mawthoh has said.
This, however, would be unpopular with the general public and that is probably why no administration has chosen to tackle the revenue gap, he opined.
With parts of Meghalaya now facing 10 hours of power cuts per day, Mawthoh said that a holistic approach needs to be taken to solve the matter.
He recalled that when he was an MLA in 2014, there was load shedding for up to 9 hours daily. “That compelled me to organise a demonstration on behalf of our party and we later formed a fact finding team comprising six political parties where I led the team as the chairman,” he told Highland Post.
What that fact finding team found, through inspections of power generating units at Umiam, Umtrew, Leshka, etc and in speaking with experts and those working in the field, was put down in a report and submitted to the Chief Minister and Power Minister of the period with suggestions.
“We learnt many things during the fact finding mission and one of the things that we could not address was that though the regulatory commission was saying that the annual revenue requirement is Rs 660 crore, the MeECL could only generate Rs 500 crore,” he informed.
To address this issue, the tariff would have to be raised but doing so would elicit a protest by the public. Mawthoh added that, in terms of revenue realisation, the Shillong sector is doing well and Jowai circle is adequate but others are not performing well.
If the issue is not sorted out, MeECL will never pay off its liabilities and this could have repercussions on the company.
Meanwhile, former Mawlai legislator Process T Sawkmie also expressed concern on the constant load shedding and stated that this has affected every sector, including students.
“Each and every citizen is suffering because of this and the economy has been badly affected. The government needs to come up with an alternative to resolve this issue,” he said.
Sawkmie added that when the recent Class 12 results were declared online, students and parents had a hard time that day because of the untimely load shedding.
Highland Post also spoke to many citizens, some who said that the government talks about many big projects, including in the tourism sector, but cannot even provide basic necessities like electricity and water.
