Coal news and updates

All trade unions of SCCL to go on three-day strike

Raising their voice in unison against the Centre’s decision to auction four coal blocks in the State for commercial mining, all the trade unions of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) have resolved to go on a three-day strike from December 9 with the slogan ‘Save Singareni’.

Setting aside the ideological affiliations, the Singareni area trade unions affiliated to the five central trade unions – INTUC, AITUC, CITU, HMS and BMS, besides the TRS-affiliated Telangana Boggu Gani Karmika Sangham (TBGKS) have come together to spearhead a 72-hour strike from Thursday.

In an extraordinary show of unity, the unions have joined hands to make the strike a success for mounting pressure on the Centre to de-list the four coal blocks from the auction list and allow the government-owned SCCL to take up coal mining in the four blocks — Kalyan Khani Block-6, Koyagudem Block-III, Sattupalli Block-III and Shravanapalli in the State.

Sources said that the last-ditch efforts by the SCCL management to avert strike and the meeting convened by the labour authorities to dissuade the trade unions from going on strike ended inconclusively in Hyderabad on Wednesday evening.

The three-day strike is slated to begin from the first shift on Thursday and is likely to result in a production loss of nearly 1.50 lakh tonnes of coal a day.

The major trade unions conducted meetings at the coal mines in Ramagundam, Kothagudem and other coal mining areas of the company on Wednesday calling upon the SCCL’s nearly 43,000 workforce to strike work for 72 hours across all the 45 coal mines in the State’s coal belt region spanning six districts.

The unions representing the contract workers of the SCCL have given a call to the entire workforce to make the three-day strike a success to achieve the other major demands including hike in salaries of the contract workers employed in the SCCL as recommended by the high-power committee on a par with Coal India Limited (CIL).