SAMBALPUR | Jun 05, 2016: COAL miners of the State, including Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), resented the move by the Centre to gift wooden-framed appreciation letters to all the employees of the power sector on the occasion of completing two years of NDA-II Government.

They alleged that miners toil hard in the open cast mines of the largest coal producers of Coal India Limited and help the company earn profit and achieve new heights. And there is a need for the higher-ups, including Union Coal and Energy Minister Piyush Goyal, to reach out to them and recognise their hard work and contribution, they added.

But the way chosen by the Minister to celebrate the occasion and the funds being spent on it has not gone down well with the miners, who feel that it is ‘sheer wastage of money.’ Other inexpensive methods could have been adopted, they reason.

Sources said the Centre had distributed an appreciation letter to the MCL via e-mail and asked the authorities to print and distribute the wooden-framed letters among all the employees. For this, the MCL spent about `156 per piece and keeping in view 22,252 employees on the rolls, an amount of about `35 lakh was utilised.

Further, with the workforce of Coal India Limited (CIL) pegged at three lakh, the total expense to be incurred by the subsidiaries of CIL can be well gauged.

The letter dated April 14, 2016 seems more of a publicity document, which carries photograph of Goyal on the right and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the left, and highlights the achievements made in the past two years by the Ministry of Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy.

Similar exercise has also been reported from NTPC and all other Central Government PSUs and the move is being resented by the miners.

The NDA-II Government completed its two years on May 26.

(Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/)