Muted coal demand and eroding profitability have forced Coal India to 'production closure' of 37 loss making underground mines in the current fiscal to save between Rs 800 crore to Rs 1000 crore annually.
"An action plan was prepared by the subsidiaries in which 37 underground mines were envisaged to be closed for production in 2017-18. This exercise will save between Rs 800 crore to Rs 1000 crore," a top CIL official said.
Coal India has identified some 60 underground mines belonging to its four subsidiaries, Eastern Coalfields (ECL), Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL), South Eastern Coalfields (SECL) and Central Coalfields (CCL) for closure in phases.
"This is production closure plan is due to financial and safety factors ... We will redeploy all the 15000 workers of the closed mines without any loss of salary to them," the official said.
Coal India has some 432 mines and of which 230 are underground mines. It informed the stock exchanges that during a review meeting with CIL and subsidiaries it was found that substantial number of mines were unable to recover salary of the workers.
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