Moya village council (MVC) and Salomi village council (SVC) have served a seven-day ultimatum on the state power department to release the payments due to the Likimro Hydro Electric Project (LHEP)company, failing which they would be compelled to take up the matter legally and also with the Government of India.
In an open letter to engineer-in-chief power, the MVC chairman K AsangYim, SVC chairman Korakmong Yim and former head GB Moya village & former president YTC/advisor ENPO, M. Thsesong Yimchunger, stated that LHEP, which falls under Moya and Salomi jurisdictions, was the only successfully run project of the power department under government of Nagaland.
The signatories said that people from Pungro sub-division have been benefitted from the project particularly the people of Moya and Salomi villages. “In fact, it has become an employment source for our people,” they said. However, they said that despite the project being run successfully, the NEC company bill for the past more than eight months was not paid by the department/government.
The signatories have, therefore, urged the department to release the payments at the earliest so the company could continue to supply power. Claiming that the state government has earned hundreds of crores of rupees from the project since 2006, the signatories said they failed to understood why the department of power has not released the payments despite finance department having already released the payment up to the month of September 2020.
They said in the past also that the department has been withholding the amount towards operation and maintenance despite release of such amounts by the department of finance. Since the project lies under the Yimchunger land and in the ENPO area specifically, the two councils affirmed that they would not tolerate such attitude of the government to shut down the project.