KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - Faced with rising production as well as falling offtake and prices, India’s Coal India Limited (CIL) has initiated steps to address customer complaints around the quality of coal supplied.

For starters, the government’s Central Institute for Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR) has been directed to monitor the quality of coal supplied to all CIL consumers.

CIMFR has also been asked to give accreditation and create a network of quality checking agencies and testing laboratories that would be entrusted with the task of monitoring all coal supplied to thermal power plants across the country.

These networks of agencies would be responsible for taking samples from every railway wagon at the time of coal dispatches, and the certificate issued would be considered as proof of standard quality. In the case of dispute between CIL and the consumer, CIMFR would be the final arbiter.

According to Coal Secretary Anil Swarup, when it came to production and meeting demand for coal, mining companies like CIL and Singareni Collieries Company Limited had improved tremendously over the past year, but there had been a rising number of complaints from consumers over the quality and grade of coal supplied as well as a rising incidence of dispatches of high volumes of stone mixed with the fossil fuel.

He said that the element of ‘quality satisfaction’ would be the new marketing element for all coal miners now that pressing issues of increasing production and meeting demand had been satisfactorily stabilised.

As per the new standard sampling procedures under consideration, third party agencies accredited by CIMFR would be made responsible for all testing of coal dispatches, replacing the present joint sampling system between the coal supplier and consumer.

These third party agencies would be required to submit their quality test report within 18 days of the dispatch of consignment and both supplier and consumer would have another week to raise any dispute on quality.

In the case of a dispute, samples would be submitted to CIMFR-accredited laboratories for testing, based on which the latter would deliver its final verdict on quality.