All the major trade unions, INTUC, CITU and INTTUc have united and have stopped the inauguration of the Tilabani Coal Mines outsourcing patch of Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL) here today.
Central public sector Eastern Coalfields Limited has outsourced its Tilabani coal patch in Durgapur – Faridpur block to a private contractor.
The private mine developer and operator (MDO) has been given a tender to excavate 1.86 million tonnes of coal annually by the Eastern Coalfields (ECL).
The chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) of ECL, Samiran Dutta was supposed to inaugurate the outsourcing patch at Tilabani Coal mines today, but due to severe opposition by all the major trade unions, the company had to postpone the inauguration.
Bansa Gopal Choudhury, former Asansol MP and CITU district secretary said that the Leftist trade union wing will not allow the central public sector coal company to hand over the coal patches to private contractors in the name of outsourcing.
“It is an effort to slowly privatise the coal mines of the country and we strongly oppose the policy of the central government to hand over nationalised coal mines to private owners,” said Bansa Gopal Choudhury.
Recently, two MPs of the ruling party of the state, Shatrughan Sinha and Shatabdi Roy have also joined an agitation to protest against the privatisation of the coal mines. Later, INTTUC district president Abhijit Ghatak also joined them.
“We will now allow the conspiracy of the central government to hand over the coal mines which have been nationalised by PM Indira Gandhi in the 1970s to the Adanis or Ambanis. The private contractors violate the safety rules and exploit poor labourers,” added Bansa Gopal Choudhury.
Shatrughan Sinha, MP of Asansol has also made it clear that he will raise this issue again in Parliament if elected from Asansol in the upcoming polls. “The future of over 50,000 to 60, 000 employees of ECL are at stake,” he said.