Meghalaya cabinet approves industrial closure scheme for closing down MCCL
The state Cabinet on Monday approved a one-time special plan for industrial closure scheme as part of the process to close down the Mawmluh Cherra Cement Limited (MCCL).
Announcing this after chairing a meeting, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said, “We have finalised and approved a one-time special plan for industrial closure scheme for MCCL.”
Stating that the government is in the process of closing down MCCL, he said, “Therefore, we have have come up with this one time special scheme where we are working with the employees to give them a golden handshake or VRS.”
According to him, the scheme was finalized after detailed discussions with the MCCL employees.
“Now, MCCL will finally propose the scheme and discussion with the employee associations and others and sign necessary papers so that it can be frozen. Once that is done, the closure will be approved and then the process of closure, which requires alot of details as you are aware it is a public limited company and the procedures, therefore, requires different processes to be followed so all those will be followed to ultimately close the MCCL,” the CM stated.
He also informed that the package approved today would also look into payment of the different liabilities.
Asked, the CM said, “I cannot give out too many details but with the employees and liabilities put together it is approximately Rs 100 crores.”
MCCL has over 205 employees.
Further, the CM informed that the government would also go for disposing of the MCCL assets.
“We will be putting up a committee for that also and that will come post the official closure that will take place and that again is a very lengthy process,” he said while adding “As I mentioned you that today’s cabinet decision is not the closure, the decision is to approve the scheme meant for the employees, which is now we will initiate the process of closure, which will include the VRS signatures and signing with the employees and also disposing of the assets and also reusing the assets of different kinds of land or area, which may be of use to the government – that aspect will start once the closure process start.”
To a question on the failure of the proposed joint venture for reviving the MCCL, the CM said that none of the three parties could meet the criteria set forth by the government.
“We went with EoI at that point in time and we floated and there were three parties that came in
One party did not meet the criteria, one party came in showed interest and then again they vanished and the third party came in, showed interest but they didnt have the full criteria to move forward when we had gone into detailed analysis and try to get all ground study on them and the criteria set was not met by them,” he said.
Also stating that the government had explored all options to resolve the MCCL issue, Sangma said, “So we explored all the options even the option of investing from the state government side and as I mentioned that it would require a one-time investment of Rs 190 crore from the government if we have to revive this plant apart from the running expenditures and the salary and more importantly the mining leases which were there have already expired and the mines also there were no sources of raw material, we have go for fresh negotiation with the mine owners for leasing the mines out to MCCL, which expires 2017 and 2022.”
“Keeping all these factors in mind after exploring all the possible options, we have to come to option number 3 for closure. The plant have been closed for last 5 years and its not producing anything. Therefore, though it is not something, which is our first choice but we have to take this tough decision because it is for the larger interest to ensuring that the employees, their safety, their taken care of otherwise months and months they have to go without salaries…,” he further stated.
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