Closure of MCCL only option before govt: Conrad
Shillong, Dec 19: Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has said the state government is looking at the terms and conditions to finalise its decision to close down the Mawmluh Cherra Cements Limited (MCCL).
“We will go for closure of MCCL as we are not able to move further because the investments required are quite high and we have already invested maybe close to Rs 300 crore in the last 15 years. We ried our best to revive it but in the given circumstances that are there, the public is suffering, the employees are suffering, the government is not being able to move forward, so the decisiveness has to be there to take one way forward, we cannot leave it hanging and hence, we have decided as a whole with all the stakeholders that we will be closing it but it will be done with proper consultation with all stakeholders in terms of the terms and conditions”, he said on Tuesday.
“We have more or less come to a conclusion and a decision along with the stakeholders and employees where we will be going for a VRS model and there will be a kind of a golden handshake with the permanent employees of the MCCL”, he said.
To a question on what happened to the decision taken by the cabinet on July 19, 2021 to go for a joint venture with private entities to operate the MCCL, the chief minister said, “We wanted to go for a joint venture but sadly we did not get too much of a positive response. As I said at first we had three options. First option was for the government to spend close to Rs 150 crore touching Rs 200 crore from our side which we felt it is very difficult for us to do.”
“Second option for us was to go for a joint venture where we had given out an expression of interest. We got few players but the players were not at that level where we felt they will be able to really do the justice to the kind of scale that we are talking about the investment and hence after doing all the evaluation of the different people who had applied, the department, the officials of MCCL and MD and the government were not satisfied with that,” he said.”
