October 12, 2024
October 12, 2024
Staff REPORTER
ITANAGAR, Mar 17: The RHEP MoU Demand Committee Friday has demanded the state government and North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO) officials to sign a fresh Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) against the 405 MW Ranganadi Hydro Electrical Project (RHEP).
Stating that due to lack of MoU, the land donors and land affected families have been deprived of its rightful benefits, Committee’s Chairman Taba Techi told media persons that as per the RTI documents the hydro project was commissioned in the year 2000 without signing any MoU.
Highlighting several discrepancies in awarding benefits to the affected people, Techi informed that the compensation paid to the land affected people against the 405 MW project was Rs 1.28 crore whereas the paid compensation amount against the 75 MW Doyang HEP in Nagaland was Rs 25.93 crore.
He added that the project was commissioned on the basis of the meeting held on August 28, 1990 between the NEEPCO and the then chief minister.
Pointing out that both the projects were undertaken in the same year, the chairman questioned whether there was two different hydro power policy drafted for Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh?
Expressing resentment against the NEEPCO of curtailing the job opportunity of the project affected people, Techi informed that against the 75 MW Doyang HEP 167 local people were recruited whereas only 36 local people got recruited against 405 MW RHEP.
Informing that there were actually 707 job vacancies against the RHEP, Techi demanded for direct and immediate recruitment of existing 671 vacancies in RHEP from the qualified and eligible candidates from the project affect people, land donor, and APST in all Group A, B, C, D as per the existing manpower to megawatt ratio norms as provisioned under National Electric, Central Electricity Authority of union power ministry.
While demanding for immediate cancellation of all ongoing and proposed recruitments against RHEP quota, Techi further informed that NEEPCO like past several years, recently recruited several engineers, clerks, electricians, etc through conducting recruitment process outside the state, and the information of which is also not reflected in their official website.
Speaking on the NEEPCO's report of the affected land and displacement which was highlighted as "partial", Techi informed that in Lower Subansiri district, four villages namely Rub, Chum, Popu, and Posa were completely submerged while three villages namely Yayee, Hoj and Lusia in Papum Pare district were submerged by the RHEP.
Terming it as a gross injustice meted out to the innocent villager, Techi further demanded strict action against the NEEPCO officials for furnishing false and fabricated information regarding the displacement of seven affected villages, and proper and fresh review and relief and rehabilitation work.
Regarding implementation of CSR-CD schemes, the chairman informed that the NEEPCO has been cheating the people by not maintaining the mandatory 2.5 percent share investment on CSR-CD work from its RHEP's net profit, further disclosing that as per the mandatory 2.5 percent share investment on CSR-CD work, NEEPCO should have been spending about Rs 21 crore till 2015 but it has only spent Rs 1.93 crore till 2015.
Demanding NEEPCO to appoint a nodal officer from the state for strict and transparent implementation of its CSR-CD schemes against RHEP on need basis, the committee also demanded NEEPCO to establish their Executive Directorate office here at Itanagar.
Meanwhile, the committee had demanded implementation of one percent of total generated power of RHEP for local area development fund since 2008 as guaranteed under National Hydro Power Policy Act 2008, on back log basis and immediate job regularization of recently W/C upgraded APST employees of RHEP.
It also threatened to launch democratic movement if the company failed to comply with the nine point demands within March 31 next.
