MANISH GUPTA
Ranchi, Nov 11: Coal India Ltd (CIL) is readying its 2.50 lakh workforce to embrace new technologies to raise their productivity as the world’s largest coal producer plans to jack up its annual coal production by 60 per cent to one billion tonnes by 2025-26.
“The coal production of CIL was 622 million tonne in 2021-22. The despatch was 661.7 million tonne. We expect to achieve 700 million tonne coal production in 2022-23,” CIL Director (Personnel and Industrial Relations) Vinay Ranjan told lagatar24.com.
The future of mining is mechanisation in coal production and despatch, electrification to reduce consumption of diesel and thereby carbon emissions, and digitisation that aims to connect the heavy machines with the systems and control room, Ranjan said.
“Digitisation is coming in all spheres. No company or employees can do without it. The employees will have to go through this change management process. We are taking up emerging technologies to increase the productivity of both man and machines,” he said.
Ranjan, who joined the Maharatna PSU company on 21 July 2021, said the company is targeting annual coal production of one billion tonne, or 1,000 million tonne, by financial year 2025-26. About 60-65 per cent of CIL’s coal production is outsourced, he said.
On whether the coal miner will require less employees due to mechanisation and use of new technologies, or will it recruit more to achieve the 60 per cent additional production in next four years, Ranjan said that executives will be recruited but not any workers.
“We do not plan to add or remove any workers. On an average 10,000 employees retire annually. However, we will recruit 1,500 to 2,000 executives including various engineers in the next two years,” he said. This works out to 40,000 less employees in four years.
CIL has an elaborate three level monitoring system to take care of workers, he said. At the central level, a Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) is there with members from five trade unions, the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) and Director (Personnel).
All eight subsidiaries of the coal mining company have their separate safety committees with dedicated area headquarters and unit headquarters, respectively for different areas under each subsidiary and units under each area. There is also a welfare committee.
Coal India, one of the largest corporate employers in India, recruited 3,420 employees on 22 October 2022 when the Prime Minister launched recruitment drive ‘Rozgar Mela’ to employ 10 lakh personnel. More than 75,000 employees were inducted that day.
