Coal India is going big on recruitment starting next month and will hire an additional 40,000 workmen at the same time.
"We will recruit management officials from campuses - mostly from IITs and NITs. Requirement for the year is about 1,000 and 3,500 over the next three years," R Mohan Das, the director-personal at Coal India, told ET.
Reportedly, more than 40,000 workmen are retiring and by 2017-18, more 15,000 will retire, which will result in decline in production, etc.
The total number of employees is around 3.2 lakh of which around 19,000 are officers.
Considering a reasonable rate of inflation, total cost of coal production, as a result, is also expected to fall by at least 10% and per-person productivity per shift is expected to rise to at least 9 tonne from 4.5 tonne now.
At present, the single largest component in the cost of production of coal at Coal India is wages and salaries. It was about 43-44% some time back, but has increased to 50% after the recent increase in wages.
"Following retirement of a large chunk of workmen, CIL will strive for greater mechanisation and increased outsourcing of coal production. This is expected to increase productivity massively," a CIL director told ET.