All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF ) criticises “arm twisting tactics” of power ministry

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.