Clamp-down ensures boost in coal output

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 8

Clamp-down ensures boost in coal output

NZPA-Reuter London Official reports from Poland yesterday suggested that its new military rulers were giving priority to re storing coal production, a vital element in the economy, in the face of the Solidarity trade union’s strike call.

Warsaw Radio, quoted the provincial newspaper, “Trybuna Robotnicza” (Worker’s Tribune) as saying that despite attempts by some Solidarity “extremists” to disrupt work in the coal mines daily production over the last five days had averaged 500,000 tonnes.

With the mines on a sevenday week production schedule, this would mean annual output about halfway between last year’s figure of 192 million tonnes and this year’s target, reduced be-

cause of the effects of the recent labour unrest, of 162 million tonnes.

But “Trybuna Robotnicza” also reported a meeting between the military governor and the Bishop of Katowice Province, a meeting which according to Solidarity sources in London suggested that the authorities were anxious to enlist the Church’s help in getting strikers back to work.

Coal is one of Poland's main hard currency earners and also one of its biggest exports to its Communist neighbours. The recent sharp drop in the productivity of miners, who are among the union’s strongest supporters, has added to the country’s grave economic difficulties.

Katowice includes the Silesian coalmines which are the backbone of the Polish economy. Its Bishop (the Most

Rev Herbert Bednorz), who “Trybuna Robotnicza” said had met the local military governor, Lieutenant-General Roman Paszowski, on Thursday, is a champion of the miners, according to the sources here. They said that the Bishop was concerned not only about the length of the miners’ working week — before Solidarity gained shorter hours they used to work six days on and two off — but also about safety in the mines. The sources said that Poland lacked the foreign exchange to import new mine equipment from the. West or to maintain its existing plant properly. The result was a series of accidents involving winding gear or fires in conveyor belts which often caused many deaths, unpublicised in the Polish press.