Talks fail, Coal India officers to go on strike

CIL is understood to have called off its board meeting on Wednesday at Kolkata, which was for clearing its public private partnership policy.

The country could be looking at an electricity crisis as Coal India’s nearly 18,000 executives on Tuesday said they would be resorting to a three-day strike from Thursday after talks between them and the PSU’s management failed to make any headway.

The Coal Mines Officers Association of India has been demanding an immediate approval of their performance-related pay (PRP) besides implementation of a new pension scheme. While the government can avert the strike by allowing Coal India to disburse the PRP, which is due since 2007 entailing an expenditure of close to Rs 3,000 crore, but it is unwilling as the model code of conduct is in force.

However, what is not understood as to how and why Coal India failed to convince the government since 2007 on the PRP issue. Privately, coal ministry officials say that cliched guidelines issued by the department of public enterprises (DPE) has prevented implementation of the PRP system, but what is clear is that CIL would lose close to 4 million tonne of output in these three days. The coal ministry officers say that the DPE has barred loss making units of the PSU from disbursing the PRP saying it would trigger similar demands from other PSUs.

CIL is understood to have called off its board meeting on Wednesday at Kolkata, which was for clearing its public private partnership policy.

“We hope that a strike is averted to avoid any fuel supply problem,” NTPC spokesperson said. NTPC is among CIL’s biggest buyers.