Kolkata: Workers at India’s largest coal miner dug their heels in on Wednesday and prepared for a prolonged agitation, affecting production for the second consecutive day.
The five-day strike, the largest industrial action by five major unions of Coal India, will be extended to 10 days if the government does not “give up its arrogance”, said S.Q. Zama, general secretary of the Indian National Mine Workers’ Federation, a wing of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). Representatives of other unions concurred.
Workers are agitating against permission for merchant mining and sale of coal in the open market, which was included as an enabling clause in the recent ordinance to auction coal mines. They say such mines, which do not pay minimum wages or ensure workers’ social welfare, will be able to sell coal cheaper and make Coal India’s produce expensive in comparison. They are also demanding a reduction of weekly workdays from six to five, each of seven hours, social security for all workers including contract workers, compensation for land losers and peripheral development in mining areas.
While a power ministry spokesperson declined immediate comment on the issue, senior officials involved in preparing a contingency plan said power generation in the country has not been impacted.
“Right now, power generation has not been affected as partial coal loading is still on. There may be no impact for the next three days. We hope this strike will end by then. We are keeping a very close watch,” said a senior government official requesting anonymity.
According to Central Electricity Authority (CEA), India’s apex power sector planning body, as of 1 January, of 100 power projects fuelled by domestic coal, 42 projects has leass than seven days stock at the stations. Of these, 20 had less than four days of fuel.
A Coal India spokesperson, said all workers were not on strike, and that some coal is still being produced. “In the first shift of work yesterday that started at 6:00am, 2.3 lakh tonnes of coal was produced by the company, which was 47% of the daily target for the shift. Though a continuation of the strike will worsen situations, the fact that some coal was being produced indicates that not all workers are participating in the strike,” he said.
But workers say they are in for the long haul.
“The ball is in the government’s court now and if they don’t start a dialogue with us by today, we will announce extending the strike to 10 days and prepare ourselves for a prolonged movement,” Zama said.
He said all five major unions—INTUC, HMS, CITU, AITUC and BMS—that represent 95% of CIL workers are in favour of a prolonged strike if things didn’t improve and that the workers were participating actively.
“We understand that the government has a compulsion following the Supreme Court (SC) order about coal mine auction, but they must discuss with us certain basic social security issues of the workers,” Zama said.
Out of the 204 coal field allocations cancelled by the SC in September, the government is looking to auction or allocate 101. Of these, 65 will be auctioned and 36 will go to state entities. The process will be conducted through online or electronic auction and will have two stages—technical and financial. The government aims to complete the auctions by 31 March.
While the average wage of a CIL mine worker is Rs.40,000 a month, that of a miner in private coal mines is only Rs.7,000, Zama said. With this large difference in employee cost, coal mined by private companies is bound to be cheaper at the cost of degrading condition of workers. With such competition, consumers will prefer the cheaper coal and Coal India’s demand will suffer in the long run, he added.
“This is a sort of indirect denationalization of Coal India by inflicting unfair competition at the cost of workers,” he said.
The workers are also objecting to the move to sell another 10% of Coal India’s shares, but workers are ready for a consensus on the issue, he said. “We are aware of the changing times and the needs of reform. Last year, the government reduced the size of disinvestment to 5% and this time too, a workable situation can be reached if the government accepts some basic conditions on job and social security,” he added.
During the initial public offering (IPO) of CIL, the unions opposed the allotment of shares to workers and they “missed an opportunity of good capital appreciation of the shares,” Zama said, adding this time, the INTUC will not obstruct employees taking shares if other demands are fulfilled. Even though CITU might oppose the move, the unions could reach a consensus on the same, he added.
Jiban Roy, general secretary of All India Coal Workers’ Federation, a wing of CITU claimed that CIL headcount had halved to 3.5 lakh in the last 12 years, but the production had gone up. “How are we producing more with fewer workers if we weren’t improving efficiency?” he asked.
“There seems to be lack of effective mechanism within this government to avert a large movement of this size and the government will learn a lesson from this strike the hard way,” he said.
According to Ramendra Kumar, president of All India Trade Union Congress, the strike time is different because the unions have united and workers are threatened by policy changes.
Coal India has 3.5 lakh permanent workers and 50,000 contract workers, while Singareni Collieries has 1.5 lakh permanent and 30,000 contract workwers, Zama said. Nearly 95% of the workers of both companies were participating in the strike, he said. Each CIL workers is losing Rs.2,000 each day, apart from the 1.5 million tonnes of coal production being lost each day and a “political solution” to the crisis is required at the earliest, he said.
The agitation comes in the backdrop of India’s coal mining production unable to meet the rising demand of fuel in the country. Behind only China and the US in coal consumption now, India is expected to become the second largest consumer of the mineral by 2016-17, with demand reaching 900 mt. Coal India is struggling to meet rising demand for the fuel. While India’s power generation capacity grew 60% over the last five years, coal production only expanded by around 6%. The country mined 532 mt in 2009-10, 533 mt in 2010-11 and 540 mt in 2011-12. Production was 557 mt in 2012-13 and 564 mt in 2013-14.
The shortage of coal has always been a problem in a country where 60% of power generation capacity is fuelled by the mineral. Of India’s 255012.79 megawatts (MW) power production capacity, 153570.89 MW is coal-based. The electricity sector accounts for nearly 80% of India’s coal consumption. India’s per capita power consumption, around 940 kilo watt-hour (kWh), is already among the lowest in the world. In comparison, China has a per capita consumption of 4,000 kWh, with the developed countries averaging around 15,000 kWh.
To be sure, the Indian coal sector, with one of the five highest reserves in the world, is in a crisis from which it cannot be extricated without pain, effort and time. The mess has kept piling up since the nationalization of coal mining four decades ago to the extent that the country today imports coal worth $20 billion a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment