TALCHERAll the coal mines of Mahanadi Coalfield Limited (MCL) resumed normal coal production and despatch on Thursday after five Central trade unions called off their strike at the end of the second day on Wednesday night.
The strike was withdrawn following a meeting between Union Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and the leaders of the unions at New Delhi.
MCL Technical Director AK Tiwari said, “As soon as the strike ended, we restored mining operations in all 22 coal mines in Talcher and Ib valley field. Though the full scale production and rake supply was not possible on Wednesday night, it came to normalcy on Thursday after full attendance in the first shift.”
The workers were appealed to speed up the production to make up the loss of around six lakh tonnes in the two-day strike, Tiwari said.
Meanwhile, the trade unions of MCL expressed happiness over response of both regular and contractual workers to their strike call. General secretary of All India Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh (BMS) Pradeep Kumar Dutta, who was present during the meeting with Goyal, said the successful two-day strike demonstrated the unity and solidarity among the coal workers across the country. “The discussion with Coal Minister was positive and touched all aspects of the issues. It was decided to form a committee under the chairmanship of Coal Joint Secretary having members of all major trade unions to sort out the demands relating to betterment of regular and contractual workers engaged in the coal sector,” he said.
Dutta also expressed happiness that the Centre is clearing all 54 pending coal blocks to CIL. On private participation in commercial coal mining, he said the Centre is allocating most of the coal blocks to end-users and not for commercial mining.