Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Tuesday said that the state government is working on the terms and conditions to finalise its decision to close down the Mawmluh Cherra Cements Limited (MCCL).
Speaking to reporters, Sangma said, “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 have) tried 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 in fact the government is now moving towards amicably settling this issue with the stakeholders and the employees and “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.”
The chief minister said that the government has not finalised the decision and is still working on the terms and conditions for closing down the company.
“The decision has not been formalised yet because as I said we want to make sure that we are clear in terms of the terms and conditions black and white before we actually sign off on that but more or less all the stakeholders are on the same page,” he added.
Asked on the decision for joint venture, 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 crores from our side which we felt 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 as a whole were not satisfied with that,” he said. He added, “Hence, as I said after deep consultation with everybody we have all now agreed that the third option is the right way to move forward.”