State govt should ensure pension, decent wages: Outsourced coal mine workers
RANCHI: Sambhu Ram, 38, is a coal worker in an outsourcing company of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad district, and earns a meagre ₹310 per day. Ram is the sole bread earner in a sevenmember family.
He lives in thatched roof house with his parents, wife and three children. For about a month during the 68-day national lockdown imposed in March, Ram went through acute financial crisis, as he struggled to find mining jobs due to decline in demand.
“I had very little savings that were exhausted to buy basic amenities during the lockdown period. However, things returned to normal after outsourcing work started again,” Ram, a resident of Dhanbad, said.
He works as a coal loader in an opencast mine in Jharia; as a daily wager, he is dependent on the work he gets every day. “The first 20 days were quiet tough, as I could not understand how to feed my family. There was no work in the market,” he said. Coal mining was unaffected by the lockdown, but the demand was badly affected for the first quarter of the current financial year.
Jharkhand has three big coal companies- Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) and Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL). Most of the companies saw their profits dip this year despite significant recovery in the second half of the year.
“Coal mining remained unaffected due to Covid-19. However, demand declined due to lockdown in the initial phases. The production was hit in the first quarter, but later it picked up. Production is still six percent lesser than last year,” said BCCL director (technical) Chanchal Goswami.
There is growing global pressure on India to announce a deadline for phasing out coal usage, after China, in September 2020, declared to discontinue coal usage by 2050. Coal, a fossil fuel, is considered the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide that causes climate change. India has not committed to phasing
out coal usage and pointed out that the country’s per capita emission – the amount of energy a person uses in India -is among the lowest in the
world.
Ram fears that his job can be jeopardised in the future and wants the government to continue coal mining. He hopes the
Centre will provide social and job security to casual workers hired from contractors. “We want equal pay for equal work, insurance and provident fund benefits to be included in the upcoming budget,” Ram said.
Jharkhand holds some of India’s biggest coal reserves and contributes 32% to the country’s coal production. After agriculture, coal employs the most people in Jharkhand, and supports at least a million households, directly or indirectly. “In a bid to enhance coal production, most of the companies have engaged outsourcing agencies. More than 50 outsourcing companies are engaged in coal production involved by the three coal companies. However, condition of all workers of outsourcing companies is similar to Sambhu Ram,” said AK Jha, national secretary of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC).
Goswami, however, denied the allegation, saying the company ensures minimum wage to workers engaged in outsourcing companies and also provides benefits such as provident fund and medical support.