Coming down heavily on Coal India's employees for not meeting the requirement of the country, Union Coal Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday urged them to take "sincere steps" to reach the per-day target of 2.5 million tonnes of production and dispatch.
"We have huge challenges ahead of us to meet the demand for the vital product, particularly when the economic growth is rapid and the demand for coal is increasing at a fast pace," he said.
Growth of coal production in 2016-17 and 2017-18 remained at a low level and today the country is facing "the stress" because of that, Goyal said, adding that prior to FY17, it was increasing at a reasonable rate.
"Even, today we are growing by at about 10 per cent and my fear is that the rate of growth is not good enough. Very soon, we may slip to a single-digit growth unless all of us collectively decide that we will not let that happen," he said at the miner's 44th Foundation day Celebration.
"I would urge all my colleagues in Coal India and various subsidiaries to seriously look at what steps each one of us can take so that we can reach the 2.5 million tonne production-and-dispatch target per day," he said.
He, however, praised workers for improving the quality over the last four years.
"Today, we don't have the kind of quality complaints we used to have 4-5 years ago. Grade slippages have almost become a thing of the past, particularly after the third-party sampling which has given assurance to the consumers of Coal India that even if there was a slippage of coal, they would not have to pay for it," he added.
--IANS
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