Union minister for coal and mines Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced 15 per cent interim relief for coal miners and employees and said no collieries would be closed and no retrenchment would be made.
Emerging from a meeting with Coal India Chairman Sashi Kumar, Union Coal Secretary P K Mishra and other officials, Banerjee said coal miners and employees would get 15 per cent interim relief from January 1.
Banerjee said she would request the labour ministry to take up the matter with the steel ministry, so that coal miners under Tata Steel and IISCO also get the same interim relief.
The minister said she favoured increasing customs duty on imported coal as protective barrier and announced that Coal Mines Nationalisation (Amendment) Bill, 2000, would not be pushed through without consensus.
Banerjee, who visited Coal India headquarters here after taking charge of coal ministry, said she would take up with the Union Finance minister Jaswant Singh the issue of increasing customs duty on imported coal.
"We advocated increasing customs duty on imported coal as protective barrier as Indian coal was not very good in quality," she said, adding that "we also wanted to produce good quality coal."
The leaders of trade unions in coal sector who also met the minister, demanded restoration of customs duty on imported coal at pre-1991 level of 85 per cent.
Banerjee, who sought cooperation of the trade unions, said there would not be any strike in coal sector as threatened by the trade unions earlier.
Referring to safety of the miners, she said that work for modernisation, expansion and safety of mines would be taken up soon. "We cannot compromise with safety of the miners."
