Meghalaya Govt to dissolve Housing Board, grants VRS to 18 employees

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJuly 10, 2024

The state government on Wednesday announced its decision to dissolve the Meghalaya State Housing Board (MSHB) and to spend Rs 7.42 crore for granting voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to over 18 employees of the board.

Addressing the media after chairing a cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, “As you are aware this is a long pending decision and lots of the employees in the housing board have been requesting that this be done at the earliest…therefore, this agenda was brought today and the cabinet has approved this particular proposal to dissolve the MSHB and to grant VRS to the 18 employees of the board.”

According to him, the financial impact for granting VRS to the employees will be around Rs 7.42 crore.

Asked the reason behind this decision, the CM said, “Basically there was not much activity in the housing board as of now. It has been a long pending demand. In fact, for more than a decade if I am not wrong, the employees also have been asking as I said the activities also have been bear minimum and the salary of the employees have also been fluctuating sometimes they don’t receive the salary as it is an independent board – so all these aspects led to the request from the employees that they would like the board to be dissolved and based on that this decision was made.”

“The housing board was set up to avail loans from HUDCO and LIC and all these things way back in 1988-89 and now respective departments and other individuals can have other mechanisms of getting loans. Therefore, the basic functioning of this particular board is not there anymore,” he stated.

Whether similar action will be taken against other non-performing PSUs in the state, the CM said, “ Yes, we have to sit down and introspect and look at the aspects and do the best interest of everybody. So wherever we are seeing there is a challenge and we are seeing that there is a kind of a consensus building up we are talking to different agencies and different boards to look into this aspect and yes it is being considered as I said whenever we take a decision like this we would like to take stakeholders on board.”