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About four lakh coal workers across the country have joined the nation-wide strike called by ten trade unions protesting against changes in labours laws and privatisation in PSUs, including Coal India.
"By and large there is no problem...In coal production if there is any setback it would be a few lakh tonnes and I already have 40 million tonnes of coal at pitheads... I do not think there is going to be much of an impact (of strike)," Goyal told reporters on the sidelines of a function.
Asked about the feedback of the strike in the coal sector, he said "Little bit may be in some pockets. Reports in the morning was quite encouraging."
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"But in any case today electricity generation is not a problem," he added.
However, Coal India Director Personnel, R Mohan Das told PTI, "About 50 per cent of the production has been hit as in most of the mines there is attendance by 50 per cent workers."
The workers joined strike at a time when the government is putting pressure on the PSU to augment production and has set an ambitious production target of one billion tonne by 2020.
Coal India accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production.
CIL achieved an output of 192.37 million tonnes (MT) in the first five months of the current fiscal, missing its target of 196.73 million tonnes. Coal India's output target for the current fiscal is 550 million tonnes.
During the 2014-15 fiscal, the PSU missed the production target by 3 per cent recording an output of 494.23 million tonnes.
In January, the coal trade unions had called for a strike, but later backed off after an agreement with the government, which ruled out denationalisation of Coal India and promised to protect interests of the PSU's employees.
The government will sell ten per cent stake in the PSU through a public offer, which could fetch over Rs 20,000 crore to the exchequer.
