In the wake of accidents in the underground mines with the roof falling and other incidents, the management of the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) had taken up the Open Cast Project (OCP) to reduce the accident rate and ensure safety of the miners, and increase coal production.
Ironically, for the first time in the history of OCP of the company, an explosion took place owing to misfire of the slurry gelatine following its ignition by detonators at the OCP-1 of the Ramagundam region, claiming four lives and injuring three others seriously on Tuesday.
Incidentally, the OCP-1 is the first open-cast project taken by Singareni and became operational in 1974. The OCP-1 has emerged a role model for all the mines of the Singareni with record coal production since it was launched. It is the first OCP to use the dragline and showel dumper technology for removal of over-burden (OB) earth.
Following the completion of the excavation of the coal OCP-1 phase-1, the management had taken up phase-2 (expansion project) to excavate 59.21 million tonnes of coal. Accordingly, the management had given the OB works to private contractors. The explosion took place at OB site when the private contractor was carrying out explosion works with contract workers.
The OCP-1 had won several prizes during the safety week celebrations in 2004-05, 2005-06, 2007-08, 2015-16 and 2017-18. It had secured an environmental award in 2014 also.
