Panel yet to prepare VRS proposal for CIL workers: Piyush Goyal

New Delhi: The government on Wednesday said a panel set up to prepare the draft voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for the employees of Coal India is yet to formulate the proposal.

"A committee has been constituted to deliberate and formulate the draft Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) for the employees of CIL. However, the committee is yet to formulate the VRS," Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written Reply to the Lok Sabha.

Coal India (CIL) has about three lakh employees.

In 2017-18, CIL has been pegged production target at 600 million tonnes (MT) with an annualised growth of about 8.3 per cent over the last year.

In 2018-19, the envisaged coal production projection is 773.70 MT with a growth of about 28.95 per cent.

The country is expected to achieve the coal production of 1.5 billion tonne by 2022, Coal Secretary Susheel Kumar had recently said.

Of the 1.5 billion tonne, 1 billion tonne would be contributed by Coal India and the rest by private producers and Singareni Collieries, the official had said.

Earlier, the government had announced to achieve a coal output of 1.5 billion tonne by 2019-20.

The coal ministry had set the target of 1 billion tonne by 2019-20 for state-run miner Coal India to cut imports and increase availability of the dry fuel to bolster growth.