MEECL fails to pacify angry jugalis

By Our Reporter

SHILLONG, JULY 24: The MeECL’s verbal assurance to extend the merit list of the jugali posts by another 3 months has failed to convince the agitating candidates, who decided to continue with the indefinite strike, which began here.

The functioning of sub-stations of the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) across the 11 districts of the state was hit after the casual jugalis – who are waiting for the appointment – ceased work as part of the indefinite strike.

The strike backed by the state youth wing of the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) was staged in front of MeECL’s office as a mark of protest against the delay in issuing of appointment letters to the jugali.

The protest was also in view that the one-year validity period of the merit list is bound to expire onAugust 2, this year.

The MeECL had on August last year declared as many as 772 successful candidates for the jugali posts, which were advertised way back in 2011. Some of these candidates are those already appointed as casual jugali.

A total of 466 candidates under the second and third phase are yet to be issued with appointment letters till date. The MeECL so far had appointed only 306 out of 772 candidates following series of protests launched since last year.

Addressing reporters at the sidelines of the strike, KHNAM-SYW president Thomas Passah said that MeECL’s chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) PS Thangkhiew has assured the delegation which met him on his invitation to extend the merit list by another 3 months and to appoint candidates under the 2nd phase by August.

“However, we have maintained that we will no longer accept such sweet verbal assurances by the MeECL. Therefore we demand that such assurance be given in black and white in the form of a notification,” Passah said.

He said since the CMD failed to reply back to the delegation on the matter, they have decided that the indefinite strike will continue since the main demand is for the MeECL to complete the process of appointing all candidates before August 2.

Passah said during the course of discussion, the CMD had only cited that the delay in appointment was due to various problems, which he however failed to pin point the reasons of such problem.

“But we feel that the MeECL has the money, otherwise why would it create such posts in the first place if there is no sanction, but it does not have the will to appoint these candidates,” he added.

Further referring to recent information sought under the RTI Act, 2005, Passah said the MeECL in its reply has revealed that the total number of sanction post of jugali is 1073 and regular jugali and casual jugali appointed so far is 596 and 462 respectively.

Interestingly to a query seeking information on the vacancy post of jugali, the reply was that till date there are around 477 vacancies, he said while questioning what is the problem that prevents the MeECL from appointing the qualified jugali.

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