Comments
The Modi government has done much to improve Coal India’s performance. But is yet to act on one issue: allow the mining behemoth to pay its officers for this performance.
As of date, the company’s 18,000 officers, including the Chairman, are owed nearly ₹2,500 crore on account of performance-related-pay (PRP), due from 2007.
System anomaly At the core of the issue is the anomaly in the performance-linked incentive scheme that replaced the ex-gratia (or bonus) system in profitable public sector units.
CIL, as a holding company, recruits officers centrally but shuffles them among the subsidiaries. The misgiving among the officers was that a capable executive posted in a less profitable venture would get less PRP than a relatively inefficient counterpart posted in a highly profitable venture.
Prolonged delay To remove this anomaly, CIL asked the government that it be allowed to pay the PRP from the consolidated net.
The Manmohan Singh government sat on the proposal, till CIL officers called a strike in March 2014. Subsequently, the government verbally agreed to the plan, but it could not be placed before the Cabinet with the announcement of elections.
The Modi government revisited the issue in its entirety and, after moving from one panel to another, the proposal is lying with the Cabinet committee.
Saurabh Dubey, a senior national vice-president of Coal Mine Officer’s Association of India (CMOI), says at least 12 MPs, including of the BJP, have written to Coal Minister Piyush Goyal. But nothing has happened.
Retiring officers suffer CIL’s officers are peeved, especially the 2,000 who retired over the last two years. For, to improve staff morale, CIL had in 2012 paid 75 per cent of the PRP arrears due between 2007 and 2010 as a ‘recoverable advance’.
CIL did this expecting an early solution to the PRP issue. But the delay has proved costly for the retiring employees, who have been asked to repay the amount.
A former general manager, who retired early this year, says he had to repay ₹10 lakh, including nearly ₹3 lakh of TDS. He is now waiting for refund from Income Tax Department.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.