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Retrenchment strategies in oil, gas sector stressed

ASIF FAROOQI

ISLAMABAD: Commercial organisations in the oil and gas sector have been asked to come up with new retrenchment policies for their respective establishments to get rid of the "dead woods" and wrongly appointed personnel, within a fortnight.

Administration officials of these organisations were pressed by the Federal Petroleum Minister Usman Aminuddin to chalk out the retrenchment policies according to the needs of each and every organisation to make these effective and result oriented.

During a meeting with chief executives of the oil and gas sector organisations, Usman emphasised the need for doing away with the inefficient and corrupt officers and those who were appointed by violating the merit and other set criteria.

This was the second meeting of its series which the minister has planned to hold on regular intervals to be briefed on the performance of the commercial organisations in the oil and gas sector. The government had announced a radical policy to bring about reforms in these institutions early this year with an aim to make these commercially viable and competent and efficient enough to compete in the world market without the government support. Corner stone of these reforms is to undertake heavy retrenchment in the sector aiming at the politically appointed personnel who have become "dead woods" over the years.

Heads of the companies were told to prepare separate entrenchment policies and report back to the government in the same sort of meeting which is likely to be held within two or three weeks time.

The meeting also discussed the ways and means to carry out effective accountability in the said companies with the specific reference to the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) and Pakistan State Oil. A number of senior PSO and OGDC officer are nominated in corruption cases which were not properly persued by the previous government. Usman told the meeting that the government was contemplating to re-open these cases to bring the corrupt elements to book.

The minister stressed that the gas companies should endeavor to drastically reduce the line losses and to arrest pilferage. He specifically referred to the line losses of Sui Northern Gas Pipeline whose losses were rising to a dangerous percentage.

Chief Executives of the companies pointed out that the ministry was not doing enough to sort out the disputes which these companies have with many of the government departments like the Central Board of Revenue and the Finance. Usman directed the concerned officials of the petroleum ministry to extend full cooperation to these companies for early resolution of the problems by taking them up with the relevant quarters.