All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF ) criticises “arm twisting tactics” of power ministry
Bahadurjeet Singh/Rupnagar
The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF ) strongly opposed the alleged arm-twisting tactics of union Power Ministery, which reportedly recently asked the state discoms to follow it’s directive to meet 10% of their fuel requirement with imported coal otherwise their coal import targets will be increased to 15%.
Union Power Minister RK Singh has also written to Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal, to start the coal import process immediately so that state thermal power plants must have adequate coal stock before the onset of monsoon. State Discoms may lift the entire quantity of coal offered expeditiously to build coal stock and in case of failure it would not be possible to give additional domestic coal to make up the shortfall.
coal V K Gupta spokesperson AIPEF said that this coal shortage has not developed overnight, but it is the result of systematic policy failure, and gross mismanagement on part of the central government.In view of mismanagement the Discoms across the country are facing constraints in the domestic coal availability and are being forced to go for imported coal for blending with domestic coal. most of the thermal power stations in the states were not designed for imported coal. Blending imported coal, according to him, would increase tube leakages in their boilers.
The federation has reiterated its demand that the centre should bear the additional cost to be entailed due to the purchase of imported coal since the state power generating houses were not responsible for the electricity crisis.
Gupta said that Indian Railway’s supply of trains to Coal India for transporting coal has fallen short of its monthly targets for more than a year. In absence of surplus money, the development of new mines and the capacity enhancement of existing mines has been crippled.
He said that the Central Electricity Authority monitors 173 thermal plants across the country and 90 thermal plants have critical coal stock on Tuesday and 8 private thermal plants are not operating.
He said that in the case of 150 thermal plants using domestic coal, The number of thermal plants with critical coal stock is 80 adding that 10 out of 15 thermal plants using imported coal are in the
critical category. In the northern region 11 state sector thermal plants out of 16 have coal stock at a critical level.
Gupta said that Most of the thermal power stations in the states were not designed for imported coal. Blending imported coal, according to him, would increase tube leakages in their boilers. It also reiterated its demand that the Centre should bear the additional cost to be entailed due to the purchase of imported coal since the state power generating houses were not responsible for the electricity crisis.
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