After days of threats and last minute cancellations, more than 3.5 lakh workforce of Coal India ltd (CIl) which is represented by five major unions on Tuesday proceeded on a five-day nation-wide strike, in protest against the Government's move to restructure the Maharatna company as well its proposed divestment. The strike led to halting of production in more than half of the company's units, which is likely to majorly impact coal supply to power plants across the country.
Though in order to resolve the crisis, the Coal Ministry had called a high level meeting with all the five unions' representatives as well as the newly appointed CIl chief Sutirtha Bhattacharya on Tuesday evening, the negotiations failed to reach any conclusions after more than three hours of brain storming.The unions are to continue with the strike, sources informed. Senior ministry officials present in the meeting, confirmed that the talks had broken down. INTUC's (which is one of the five unions) R P Singh when contacted by The Pioneer, also said that stalemate continues and future action will be decided on Wednesday.
By the time the negotiations began in the national capital in the office of the Coal Secretary Anil Swarup at around 7 pm, the first day of the strike had resulted in an estimated loss to the tune of Rs 35 crore. Though according to CIl sources, the losses are yet to be worked out, the aforementioned figures were being attributed to the early hours of Tuesday when the first shift of work got affected across all the subsidiaries of the company. According to company sources, out of the 438 units of CIl, 271 were completely impacted by the strike. There was only partial production from 57 units. The PSU has suffered losses to the tune of Rs 35 crore in the first shift only.
The strike, joined by all five major trade unions - BMS, INTUC, AITUC, CITU and HMS - is likely to affect production of up to 1.5 million tonnes (MT) of the dry-fuel per day besides fuel supply to power plants which are already grappling with fuel shortages.