A key strategy that would help Coal India Ltd (CIL) double its output within the next five years, which wasn't mentioned when coal and power minister Piyush Goyal unveiled the ambitious project Utkarsh on Friday, was the public sector giant's critical reliance on ''international mine developers and operators" and on "contract mining", according to the project briefing document available with dna.

Partnering foreign mine developers and operators having requisite experience and know-how in coal mining is one of the key strategies to touch the 1 billion tonne target by 2020. This would help the doubling of power capacity in the country and eliminate the need to import costly thermal coal.

"This will get the advantage of efficiency in operations and ease of technology transfer. In this regard a Model Contract Agreement has been approved by Coal India board and circulated to subsidiary companies for implementation," the confidential document said.

This express reliance on foreign miners to exponentially raise production would surely raise the hackles of the highly unionised workforce of CIL numbering more than 3 lakh. So will the dependence on contract miners.

Dependence on "large-scale contract mining" is one of the seven challenges outlined by CIL in the document.

The other factors are: speedy land acquisition and state-level clearances, expeditious environmental and forest clearances, three critical railway lines that are coming up; switching over to full mechanisation, upgrading skill of employees and deployment of sufficient manpower.

Evacuation of mined coal remains a key constrain for CIL for which a unified concerted effort between CIL, Railways and the state has been proposed in the document.

"Around 55% of the entire coal transportation is through rail mode. However, there are a few coalfields in the country which have huge production potential but are bereft of rail linkages. Among these, three rail lines linked to Central Coalfields (Jharkhand), Mahanadi Coalfields (Odisha), South Eastern Coalfields (Chhattisgarh) are critical and expected to play a key role in evacuation of coal," the document said.

Major investments in latest technologies like use of more 3D seismic survey, vehicle tracking and operator independent truck dispatch systems, monitoring using laser scanner, tele-monitoring and long-wall mining equipment at select places have been proposed.

Improving productivity of an ageing workforce and improvement of talent attraction and retention in management cadre are other key challenges.

"A team of HR functionaries from all levels from all subsidiaries has revisited the current people practices in the context of the changing business imperatives to redefine the role of HR in CIL," the document said.

Source:dnaindia.com