Parliamentary panel raps CIL for outsourcing work

A Parliamentary Committee has rapped Coal India Ltd (CIL) for fudging cost figures to justify and continue outsourcing of its various coal production activities.

The committee has also asked CIL to minimise the outsourcing, which it says, could bring about escalation of production cost, corruption and exploitation of labour.

"CIL had tried to justify outsourcing by furnishing comparative figures of cost of production in Bhubaneswari, Kamah and Kulda opencast projects where some mining activities have been outsourced," the Committee observed in its Fourteenth report.

The committee was "surprised" that CIL while calculating the cost of mining in outsourced projects, had "completely" ignored the expenditure being incurred on the heavy machines and work force that lay idle due to the outsourcing, it added.

The committee, in its report presented to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, has asked the CIL to chalk out a plan to minimise outsourcing and ensure full capacity utilisation of men and machines to bring down the cost of production in the projects being operated departmentally.