Nagaland Pulp & Paper Company Limited matters gathering dust

•    NLA highlighted on plight of employees
•    40 plus existing employees languishing without pay since 2017

Our Correspondent
Kohima | March 25

With the matter pertaining to the Nagaland Pulp & Paper Company Limited (NPCC), Tuli gathering dust, the employees and the retiree are facing grim situation, the State Assembly was informed on Thursday. 

Highlighting the issue during the general discussion on budget for the year 2022-23 on the last day of 11th session of 13th Nagaland Legislative Assembly (NLA) on March 24, MLA Amenba Yaden said that 40 plus existing employees languishing without pay since 2017, without any positive response from the State Government to their appeals and memorandum.

Joint venture gone awry
Yaden explained to the members that the NPCC was a joint venture between Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL), a Government of India (GoI) Enterprise and Government of Nagaland, which started as a State’s only Government of Nagaland.

It was gifted by the national leaders in 1971, solely for the upliftment of socio-economic condition of the Naga people, he maintained. 

The commercial production started in the mid 1982 and the NPPC was producing the best quality paper with the Watermark label “Naga Paper” which became a national sensation, he said. 

Unfortunately, its production stopped abruptly in October 1992 for various reasons and the matter was referred to the BIFR (Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction), he added. 

The BIFR after due consideration in May, 2007 had approved its restructuring the mill by infusing an amount of Rs 552.44 crore, Yaden noted. 

The Union Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises then released an amount of Rs 54.50 crore as first phase of revival amount in September 2007, and out of this, an amount of Rs 36.76 crore was spent by the HPCL/NPPC during 2007 to 2009, he said. 

Fund diversion 
Afterwards another revised Detail Project Report (DPR) was submitted to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in March 2009 for granting an amount of Rs 679 crore.

The Ministry then released Rs 100 crore to the then Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of HPCL in September 2013, but out of this, an amount of Rs 60 crore was diverted to other head for their vested interest resulting in total stoppage of the Rehabilitation scheme of NPPCL, Yaden maintained. 

A number of memorandums have been submitted to the concern Minister of the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries on several occasions, “but the HPC which is the holding company is already dead and there was no response from their side to the order of the Ministry,” he added. 

Consequently, many of the unfortunate employees are not getting their salaries since August 2017 and the gratuity and terminal benefits of superannuation and family pensions to widows of deceased employees has been stopped since October, 2015, Yaden said. 

The matter is gathering dust with the National Liquidation Board, he added. 

Successive Chief Secretaries and Chief Ministers including the present Leader of the House has written to the concerned ministers highlighting the plight of the employees, he informed, while adding the he was not aware whether there were any responses. 

Rotting infrastructure
The Nagaland Government has an equity share of 12.5 % and the land is also leased out to the company by the State Government but the massive infrastructures are rotting while hundreds of residential buildings remain like a ghost town, he added. 

To this end, he appealed the government of the day to frame an appropriate policy to restore and make use of the industrial infrastructures.

More importantly, he called for addressing the plight 40 plus existing employees who are “languishing without pay since 2017 and many other who had gone on retirement without getting salaries of many months and pension & gratuity etc.”

Appeals and memorandum submitted by employees’ union to the government airing their plights and grievances are “gone in thin airs,” he said and asserted that State Assembly “cannot remain indifferent to this pathetic condition of the employees.”