With most parts of the coal belt region reeling under severe heat wave conditions ahead of mid-May as mercury hovers around 45 degree Celsius, the demand for rescheduling the work timings of coal workers in the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL)’s coal mines in Kothagudem region is becoming shriller.
Almost all the trade unions operating in the coal belt region have urged the management of the State-owned SCCL to change the work timings of the coal workers in view of the extreme heat conditions prevailing in the coal mines particularly the opencast projects.
The CITU affiliated Singareni Collieries Employees Union (SCEU) and the AITUC affiliated Singareni Collieries Workers Union (SCWU) have raised the issues facing workers engaged in surface mining operations such as their vulnerability to extreme heat conditions, during various programmes held to mark the World Labour Day on May 1.
The leaders of the other major trade unions also expressed their concern over the gruelling heat wave that gripped the coal mining areas and sought change of shift timings of workers to protect them from the risk of heat related ailments.
‘Protect workers’
The opencast mines continued to sizzle with the temperatures soaring to near 50 degree Celsius making it arduous for the workers to perform surface mining and other allied operations in the OCPs, general secretary of the SCEU M. Narasimha Rao said.
The district authorities should take note of the serious health hazards to which the workers of the OCPs are exposed due to the extreme heat conditions and intervene to ensure rescheduling of their work timings, he suggested.
Coal miners are susceptible to heat stroke, exhaustion, dizziness, cramps, and other heat related ailments and as such they urgently need succour from the blistering heat wave sweeping across the coal mining areas, insisted K Srinivas, a Kothagudem-based activist of the INTUC. The SCCL management had rescheduled the work timings in OCPs in May first week in 2017 when similar heat wave swept across the Kothagudem coal belt region, he recalled.
A slew of heatwave mitigation measures such as provision of ORS and butter milk sachets and makeshift shelters at the work sites to provide shade for the coal workers have already been initiated in all the coal mines, said an official of the SCCL. All the heavy earth moving machines those deployed in OCPs are equipped with air-conditioners in the operators’ cabins, he added.