Telangana announces Rs 796 crore bonus for Singareni employees

Hyderabad, Sep (IANS) Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Friday announced a Rs 796 crore bonus as a ‘Dussehra’ gift for the employees of state-owned Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL).

Each of the over 41,000 regular employees will get a Rs 1.90 lakh bonus while Rs 5,000 each will be paid to contract workers.

The bonus is being paid to the coal workers from the profits earned by the company in the last financial year.

Revanth Reddy praised the Singareni workers for playing a key role during the Telangana movement.

Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka said that the company earned a net profit of Rs 4,701 crore in 2023-2024. Out of this, Rs 2,289 crore has been allocated for the expansion of the company and other investments. In the remaining Rs 2,412 crore profits, the company earmarked Rs 796 crore to pay bonuses to the coal workers.

A total of 41,387 permanent employees are working in the company.

Last year, the employees got Rs 1.70 lakh each bonus. For the first time in the history of Singareni, the state government announced a bonus for the contract workers. At present, 25,000 contract workers are working in the company.

The Deputy Chief Minister said that each employee will get a Rs 5,000 bonus before Dussehra.

The SCCL has been supplying coal to thermal power generation plants, and other companies in the state and also exporting to other states.

Vikramarka said that the state government decided to invest the profits earned by the Singareni company for future needs. The government envisaged plans for the expansion of solar power plant to 1000 MW, construction of 500 MW pumped storage plant at Ramagundam, another 1x800 MW thermal power plant at the existing thermal power plant at Jaipur, 1x800 MW thermal power plant at Ramagundam jointly with TSGENCO and to set up a supercritical thermal power plant with a capacity of 2,400 MW at Naini coal block (pit head) in Odisha.

The establishment of new residential schools for Singareni workers and employees' children, integrated schools, modernisation of area hospitals, and establishment of a multi-speciality hospital in Hyderabad will be the new initiatives for the welfare of the workers.

Ministers Uttam Kumar Reddy, Damodar Rajanarasimha, D. Sridhar Babu, Tummala Nageswara Rao, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, Seethakka, Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, Konda Surekha, Ponnam Prabhakar, Jupalli Krishna Rao, State Planning Board Vice President Chinna Reddy, Zaheerabad MP Suresh Shetkar, Singareni Region MLAs - Gaddam Vinod, Makkan Singh Raj Thakur, and Premsagar Rao, Singareni MD Balaram, leaders of trade unions Vasireddy Sitaramaiah, Janak Prasad and others were present on the occasion.