Congress, CPM Support Singareni Employees' Strike

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President Revanth Reddy on Friday announced total support to the 72-hour-long strike by the employees of the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) in protest against the decision of the union BJP government to privatise four coal blocks in the region.

Reddy said that the SCCL had been serving the country for the last 132 years, and was the first public sector undertaking in the country with the state and union governments having shares of 51% and 49% respectively. It had generated revenues of thousands of crores in the form of cesses and dividends for both the governments. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, the SCCL had earned healthy revenues.

It was inexplicable why, despite all of the above, the union government was proposing to privatise four coal blocks - Kalyan Khani block-6, Koyagudem block-3, Sathupalli block-3 and Shravanapalli - belonging to the SCCL, Reddy said.

"If the coal blocks are allocated to private companies, they might create artificial shortages so as to increase the prices of coal and power. This will put a huge burden on the common people. Further, the livelihood of nearly one lakh families, including the families of 75,000 SCCL employees, will be at stake. The privatisation of the SCCL will kill job opportunities and leave thousands of present employees jobless," he said.

Reddy added that the TRS government was also responsible for the decision of the BJP government to privatise the SCCL. He said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was trying to wash his hands off by just writing a letter to the Centre against the proposed privatisation of the four coal blocks. He lamented that despite being the majority shareholder in the SCCL, the KCR government did not question the Centre's decision, and his recent letter to PM Modi was just an eye-wash.

"KCR is betraying the SCCL employees. The employees had a lot of expectations of the ruling TRS, and with the same trust they elected K Kavitha, KCR's daughter, as the Honorary President of their recognised union in the last elections. However, KCR has mortgaged the interest of the SCCL employees before the BJP government at the Centre by helping its anti-worker policies. The TRS MPs did not utter a single word about the SCCL's privatisation during the ongoing winter session of the Parliament. KCR is unable to raise his voice against the Centre as he fears that PM Modi will take action against his irregularities and corruption. Both the TRS and the BJP governments are hand-in-glove with each other to sell away the SCCL to private parties," he alleged.

The TPCC chief demanded that the state government purchase the 49% stake held by the union government to stop the privatisation of the SCCL. He also demanded that the state government clear its Rs. 13,000 crore dues to the company.

He added that the Congress would continue to support the agitation of SCCL employees unions until the BJP government dropped its decision to privatise the four coal blocks.

The CPM too extended its complete support to the strike of the Singereni Collieries workers. It demanded that the union government immediately withdraw its decision to privatise the mines of the company.

State secretary of the party Tammineni Veerabhadram alleged that the Narendra Modi-led union government was affecting the self-reliance of the country by privatising several public sector undertakings, and that the privatisation of the Singareni mines was one more element of the "conspiracy" of the union government to privatise public sector undertakings.

He claimed that the privatisation of the four coal blocks would eventually lead to the privatisation of the entire company.