Government to tighten surveillance at major coal mines: Piyush Goyal

The government plans to tighten surveillance at all major coal mines to control coal theft, as the country is reeling under dry fuel shortages.

"The government has proposed to establish a national coal dispatch monitoring centre. Moreover, real time surveillance at all major sensitive zones is being planned and reject-based power plant will be set up next to mines," Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Sunday.

A proposal for a multi-disciplinary security force is also under consideration, he added.

"The home minister has assured that the government will help us in creating special multi disciplinary task force," the minister said.

Stating that controlling the pilferage as his priority the minister said the government is "setting up surveillance system, cctvs (all some of the major mines). And all of this is going to be linked with central monitoring stations at three levels--at the coal company level, at Coal India headquarter level at Kolkata and at Delhi," the minister said.

The government said that in this way there would be three-pronged monitoring of the major coal mines which would ensure coal theft could be reduced.

The previous government had also said that it has taken several measure to prevent pilferage of coal from the coal mines like establishing check posts at the vulnerable points, deployment of armed guards round-the-clock around the coal dumping yards and conducting regular patrolling in and around the mine.

It had also introduced steps like global positioning system to track the coal transportation from mine to unloading place.