Lately, the WCL has seen tough times, with falling production and profitability. The reason is more enough, it seems, for top guns of WCL to get rid of unprofitable WCL. If one ponders over the reason, he or she may be right. A look at the recent orders following request-transfers indicates that WCL is not at all the preferred destination for senior management officers.
Nagpur News:
However, the picture in the Western Coalfields Limited (WCL), one of five subsidiaries of Maharatna PSU CoaL India Limited (CIL), is totally contradictory if the rat race among the top bosses of WCL, who have been posted in the WCL after the recent promotions, is taken into consideration. The rat race is for transfers to other lucrative (beneficial) subsidiaries of CIL in Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Assam.
It may be recalled the Nagpur Today had carried out a series of reports on bungling by WCL bosses then it may be fires in its mines at several places, misuse of water in the situation of grave water shortage, life-threatening pollutions the mines are causing, irresponsible mining beyond permissible limits thus sucking all the ground water sources leaving the nearby area high and dry, and many more goof ups on the part of top WCL bosses.
The net horrid outcome was, lately, the WCL has seen tough times, with falling production and profitability. The reason is more enough, it seems, for top guns of WCL to get rid of unprofitable WCL. If one ponders over the reason, he or she may be right. A look at the recent orders following request-transfers indicates that WCL is not at all the preferred destination for senior management officers.
Recently, a batch of officers in various subsidiaries was promoted to senior management level. However, 20 officials are seeking a change in their transfer postings. Of these, nine had been posted at WCL on promotion.
At the same time, there is no order allowing a transfer to WCL, which indicates that no official requested for a posting here.This is despite Nagpur being one of most developed cities where any CIL subsidiary is located, besides the parent company’s location in Kolkata. WCL’s work culture is said to be a major reason for this, said a source in the middle management level.
For example, if some officer originally posted in Dhanbad-based Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) was promoted and transferred to WCL, he has moved a request and got a posting in South East Coalfields Limited (SECL) at Bilaspur, instead. As a practice in government, normally transfers come along with promotions. A source familiar to the process said around 10% of the officers getting a promotion had moved a request to change the place of deployment of course for obvious reasons.
Senior officials in WCL admitted this phenomenon. “This is due to several reasons, including falling profitability in recent years. Officers get performance related pay (PRP), which is directly related to the profits. Other subsidiaries have relatively better finances and are hence preferred. Moreover, there is also a surplus in the senior levels, so everybody will not get a lucrative office at WCL, which discourages many from coming here,” said a source on condition of anonymity.
Difficult mining conditions have made work tougher in this subsidiary, again driving people away from it. In this batch, two mining engineers have got their posting to WCL cancelled apart from some others in the technical cadre.
Apart from these reasons, WCL’s location is far away from that of other subsidiaries, which are concentrated in the east. Majority of the personnel are from the eastern states like Bihar and Bengal, and they prefer to stay close to their hometowns. A posting in Nagpur or any other area under WCL brings them to the farthest posting in their life. So, personal reasons too are cited to get transfers to WCL cancelled. Though there are enough officers in the senior level, there is certainly a dearth of officials in the middle-level, said a source here.
However, the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you remain a rat.
