Mechanisation drive to make SCCL mines more productive & risk-free

Dealing with multiple challenges arising out of the growing coal demand across the country and the pressure on overall performance including risk mitigation, state-owned Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) is going all out to speed up the mechanisation of both the underground and opencast mines in Andhra Pradesh.

A whopping Rs 395 crore has been earmarked by the SCCL towards capital investment for the year 2005-06, a significant portion of which goes into installing mining technologies, as compared to Rs 225 crore in the current year and Rs 160 crore in the year 2003-04.

Besides acquiring intermediate technologies such as Load Hall Dumpers (LHD), Side Dumper Loaders (SDL), Blasting Gallery and Continuous Miner for the underground mines, the company has also set up a high-level committee to study the techno-economic feasibility of High Wall Technology which is used for opencast mines.

The Continuous Miner is estimated to cost around Rs 95 crore while the Blasting Gallery is estimated to cost over Rs 50 crore. The collieries is expected to spend Rs 18 crore on LHDs while the SDL is expected to cost around Rs 10 crore.

"Of the 54 underground mines, which are spread across the four districts of Karimnagar, Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam, 21 can be mechanised, according to the expert committee. With Godavari and Pranahita Vallies having the maximum geological faults among other coalfields, roofing of underground mines has been very unstable making them vulnerable for accidents. This has made us go in for mechanisation of these mines in a phased manner," R H Khwaja, chairman and managing director of SCCL, said in an interview with Business Standard.

Khwaja, a 1976 batch Andhra cadre IAS officer, has been conferred the 'Outstanding Chief Executive for the year 2003-04' award by the Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering.

That mechanisation of the mostly-unviable underground mines in the Singareni coalfields has been aimed at serving more than one purpose is obvious from the fact that the improvement in productivity and reduction in the number of workers are being achieved over the past few years by this measure.

"Ill-informed people criticise that mechanisation is only meant for job reduction. But the incidence of human loss in the underground mines will also come down to a greater degree," Khwaja said.

The size of the workforce in the company has come down to 92,359 by the end of November 2004 from 1.17 lakh when Khwaja took over as the chairman and managing director of SCCL three years ago with a conscious effort by the management in a bid to make the company economically-viable.

SCCL had achieved a dramatic turnaround in 1997 from a position of having accumulated losses of about Rs 1,219 crore with zero networth to a Rs 1,827-crore networth company with a debt-free status last year. It earned over Rs 500 crore profit before tax in the previous year.

"The strategy on performance is centred around the improvement of working conditions and welfare measures, where mechanisation has a key role to play," Khwaja said while referring to the fact that the company has spent a whopping Rs 317 crore, which means over Rs 34,000 per worker, on welfare programmes during 2003-04.

Now, the concept of performance improvement measures has percolated even deeper with newer measures such as air-conditioning of driver's cabins on all the coal dumpers.

"As the performance levels of drivers deteriorated on account of hot temperatures hovering around 45 degrees centigrade, we have now decided to air-condition the cabins of all the dumpers," Khwaja said.

The company plans to equip the cabins of over 250 dumpers with air-conditioners, costing over Rs 2 lakh per vehicle, which amounts to Rs 5 crore.

Though the company is increasing its production along with productivity on a year-on-year basis, the demand is increasing much more faster.

"Getting speedy clearances for new mines is one of the major challenges we have been facing in the present stage of consolidation," the CMD said.

About three new mines are slated to be opened during 2005-06, but that too may not meet the requirement and actual plans. The company has targetted a production of 35.78 million tonnes of coal during 2005-06 as compared to the target of 34.2 million tonnes during the current year.

When it comes to utilisation, 74 per cent of the total production of SCCL is used for thermal power generation while 13 per cent is consumed by the cement industry.

Over 6 per cent of coal is being used by the non-core sector which include brick kilns, ceramics, pharmaceutical industry among others while 9 per cent of coal is estimated to be consumed by the captive power plants.

Due to the shortage of coal, only the coal supplies to thermal generation are maintained on par with the original coal linkage, while the non-core sector receives around 50 per cent of coal as compared to the actual coal linkage given to these industries.

In a bid to balance the situation, SCCL has frozen the coal linkages to the new power plants.

According to Khwaja, Singareni Collieries provides indirect employment to over one lakh people in the four districts and another 4 lakh people are employed through the non-core sector which uses SCCL coal in the state.