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| Non-power coal consumers hit out at CIL |
| Jayajit Dash / Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar Sep 15, 2009, 00:51 IST |
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Coal consumers in the non-power sector have hit out at Coal India Limited (CIL) for what they termed as preferential treatment meted out by the coal major to its consumers in the power sector.
These consumers have demanded that CIL should treat its other consumers at par with the consumers in the power sector.
“The coal consumers in other sectors are discriminated vis-a-vis their counterparts in the power sector in terms of coal supplies, both qualitatively and quantitatively. While power consumers being the major coal guzzlers in the country manage to get good quality coal, the other consumers have to remain content with inferior coal quality and inadequate supplies of the raw material”, an official of the Coal Consumers Association of India (CCAI) told Business Standard.
Industry sources said that there are some specified parameters for supply of coal to the power utilities including ash and moisture content in coal but no such guidelines were laid down for the consumers in other sectors like sponge iron, paper and chemicals.
“For the power sector, the trigger level of coal is usually fixed for a period of five years. However, for the non-power coal consumers, the trigger level changes from time to time depending on the whims of CIL”, the CCAI official alleged.
The official pointed out that the CIL had recently entered into a bipartite Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA) with National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) wherein the trigger level was fixed at 90 per cent.
However, for the non-power coal consumers, the trigger level of coal was not fixed and on instances, it could even go down to 20-25 per cent, the official added.
Trigger level as mentioned in the Centre's New Coal Distribution Policy is the minimum assured level of coal supply and offtake failing which both parties attracted penalty.
However, CIL has rubbished all these allegations raised by the coal consumers.
“CIL is committed to supply coal to all its consumers as per their requirement and there is no discrimination. We would supply 313 million tonnes of coal to the power sector this fiscal but that does not mean that we would ignore the interests of the consumers in the other sectors”, said a senior CIL official. Earlier, the coal consumers drawing coal from the Basundhara coal block under the command area of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) had complained of inferior coal quality. These coal consumers alleged that the coal quality from this block had not improved even after the issue was taken up with the authorities of MCL and CIL.
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