Date | Oct 21, 2016:

After a four-day long shut down, mining activities in Talcher coalfield area resumed on Thursday with the Hywa owners association withdrawing their strike. “All the nine coalmines at Talcher are back to normal, on Thursday afternoon following talks with the administration.

The Hywa owners association which resorted to the strike has since called off their strike,” said the sub divisional police officer of Talcher, Kailash Chandra Parida. On Monday, thousands of drivers and helpers under the banner of the association had resorted to the strike on the issue of payment of their annual bonus paralysing all the nine mega coalmines.

The strike continued till Thursdayafternoon when the association was called off, following a meeting of the local administration to solve the bonus issue. Police as a crackdown measure, on last night, picked up eight owners and released them on personal bond. According to MCL officials sources, Odisha lost a revenue of Rs.20 crore while the centre lost Rs.60 crore due the strike over the last four days as coal production stopped. Meanwhile the situation in both Talcher Thermal and Talcher-Kaniha power plants, both, is still critical. According to information from Talcher Thermal power station (TTPS), has shut down a 60 Mw unit and regulated power generation due to acute shortage of coal. Following a month long short supply, the power plant slipped into a crisis forcing the authorities to shut down a unit.

"We got some coal through land route today and still waited for rail supply. There is virtually no stock in our stockyard with the availability of only 20,000 tonne only which are not fully extractable,"said a TTPS source. The coal borne situation in 3000MW NTPCKaniha is also critical with the stock plummeted to record low of 1,20 lakh tonnes as against the requirement of 7 lakh tone.

The plant which supplies coal to 17 Indian states shut down two units out of thesix due to want of coal and with another unit out of service, it was running only three units. The daily generation of power which is 3000 Mw has slipped to 1000 MW. “We got no coal since Monday when there was a strike at Talcher coalfield. So we were forced to shut down two units and regulating the generations from other running unit due to want of coal,” informed a NTPC official.

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