Coal miners begin 5-day strike today
Moneylife Digital Team 06 January 2015

Unions including BJP-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh have joined together to go on strike for 5 days, affecting coal supply in many parts of India

 

7 lakh coal industry workers today joined together to go on a nationwide strike. In the biggest union action since 1977, this strike is being supported by all the major trade unions in the country, including the BJP-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) among others.
 
The strike has been called with a demand to roll back the process of denationalising the coal sector and to protest the proposed re-structuring and disinvestment of Coal India Limited.
 
India has had many coal supply shortages in the recent past, but the power sector has managed to scrape through. This strike will affect coal production of upto 1.5 million tonnes per day and is expected to hit power producers and cause blackouts.
 
Newly appointed Coal India Limited CMD Sutirtha Bhattacharya was quoted by PTI News as saying, "We are hopeful the situation would be resolved in an amicable manner. The precise impact of the strike would be known later and it would be premature to predict (the impact) at this juncture."
 
Power minister Piyush Goel is expected to meet union representatives to address their demands tomorrow. This meeting gains significance because as per reports, coal supply to the North and East of India are already stretched and being cash-strapped, these utilities would not be able to buy power, possibly causing wide-scale blackouts.
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