The South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) will be putting up safety messages on 'Retro Reflective Sign Boards' at different locations of its Gevra mining project in Korba district of Chhattisgarh, officials informed. Notably, SECL crossed 100 million tonnes of coal production as on January 12, 2016. To enhance and maintain the safety awareness among workers 'Safety Fortnights' and special safety drives are observed in all mines of SECL. Awareness and Safety talks in each shift are being practiced on regular basis to develop a safety culture in accordance of “Code of Safe Practices”, officials informed. Initial training is imparted to all new entrant and refresher training to all employees as per statute. Thrust on training and retraining of Supervisors, Support Personnel, HEMM operators and contractor’s workers was maintained as a strategy to reduce accidents due to roof/side falls in underground mines and accidents in open cast (OC) mines and at surface of mines, they informed. Notably, the Coal India Ltd is targetting production of 1 billion tonnes of coal by 2020. Wagon availability will be a key factor for achieving this target by Coal India Ltd, officials stated. By signing of the MoU, the Railways and Coal India Ltd will be entering into a strategic partnership which would ensure adequate wagon availability for meeting the transportation needs of coal produced by Coal India Ltd. Notably, the Central government has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding each with the states of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh for critical coal connectivity projects to improve transportation of coal, officials informed. Two Coal India Ltd (CIL) subsidiaries mainly – Sambalpur (Odisha) based Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and the Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh) based South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL) are expected to play a pivotal role in CIL’s quest of attaining the one billion tonnes (BT) production target with 250 MTs and 240 MTs respectively, officials informed. Notably, CIL, had unveiled its road map, of strategies to be adopted, to attain the one Billion Tonne (BT) coal production mark by 2019-20. With the projected coal demand of the country hovering around 1,200 Million Tonnes (MTs) by 2019-20, at an envisaged growth rate of 7 per cent, CIL is expected to chip in one BT, of which 908 MTs is the expected contribution from the identified projects. The process of identification of projects to share the balance quantity, to top up the one BT mark, is also underway. The key issues that the coal miner is basically relying on are timely completion of three critical railway lines and timely land acquisition and green clearance. CIL has assessed a tentative capital investment of ` 57,000 crore for next five years to ramp-up its coal production to 908.1 MT from production level of 494.80 MT in 2014-15 as part of the road map for production of one BT coal by 2019-20. Notably, CIL has recorded offtake of coal from its largest subsidiary South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) at 124.34 million tonnes between April 2015 to February 2016. This was against the target of 123.89 million tonnes (MT) - a growth of 11.1 per cent.