HYDERABAD: Criticising IT Minister KT Rama Rao for his call for protests during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Hyderabad on Saturday for the Centre allegedly privatising Singareni Collieries Company Ltd, BJP MLA Eatala Rajender on Friday said that the State government was responsible for pushing the company into debts.
Addressing the media at BJP party office, Rajender questioned Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao why the head count of Singareni employees dropped from 63,000 in 2014 to 43,000 employees presently.
“It happened because you brought in private contractors who engaged outsourced workers. While the workers in Coal India are getting Rs 930 per day as wages, Singareni workers are getting `430. Who is exploiting the workers?” he asked KCR.
Pointing out that after the amendment of Mines and Minerals Regulation Act in 2015, which had given leverage to the State governments to get coal blocks allocated through Coal India, Rajender said that the State government failed to apply and secure even one of the four coal blocks directly under its control since 2017.
Referring to the Tadicherla coal block, Rajender alleged that the BRS, which he said opposed giving coal blocks to private players during the Telangana movement, willfully made the Singareni write to the Centre that mining Tadicherla block wasn’t feasible.
“Genco was allocated Tadicherla coal block, and it requested Singareni to do the mining. But Singareni was asked to submit that it wasn’t viable.
Then the coal block was allocated to AMR,” he claimed, adding that there was no need to reveal who the ‘binami’ who benefited in the process.
He also spoke about how Aurobindo bagged a coal block in the opencast allocation, by virtue of being the sole bidder.