Coal India to spend Rs 1,000 crore on executives’ salary hikes this year

KOLKATA: Coal India will see an additional annual outgo of Rs 800 crore on account of recent salary hike for executives. The state-run miner will bear a total outgo of Rs 1,000 crore this year on account of the hike, including a rs 200-crore arrear component, as it is effective from January 2017.
It has made a provision of Rs 100 crore per quarter totalling Rs 400 crore this year.

According to a senior Coal India executive, pay scales of all executives have been revised and made on a par with those at ONGC. This was a long-standing demand of executives who did not see their salary scales revised for several years. The pay scale for entry level executives was revised to Rs 40,000-1,40,000 per month from Rs 16,400-40,500.

The new salary has merged the dearness allowance, which was 117% of the basic pay, and leads to an increase of about 20% in gross salary, a senior executive said. Pay scales for executives below board level have been raised to Rs 1.5 lakh-3 lakh from Rs 62,000-80,000. The chairman’s pay scale has been increased to Rs 2 lakh-3.7 lakh from Rs 80,000-1.25 lakh.

“Salaries of Coal India executives are revised every 10 years and the current revision fell due more than a year ago on January 2017,” said a senior Coal India executive, who is also part of the Coal Mines Officers’ Association of India (CMOAI).

“Since salaries are revised every 10 years, pay scales of ‘Maharatna’ companies were more than that of Coal India executives for a number of grades before the hike. Executives have been asking the management to correct the anomaly and make it on a par with other large PSUs.”

Some executives were being paid less than some workmen because the latter’s wages are revised every five years, he said.