OGDCL employees up in arms against unlawful hiring, capping of salaries, pensions

ISLAMABAD :  The hiring of top officials void of the rules in Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) and capping of salaries/ pensions have forced the regular employees to go for strike , bringing the administrative work at the company headquarters in Islamabad at standstill.

 

Sources said the employees of OGDCL are protecting against hiring of senior officials of the company from the outside against the rules and granting them irrationally higher salaries.

 

OGDCL head office in Islamabad is almost non-functional since last Monday and there seems no end to the on-going strike to restore work of Pakistan’s largest oil and gas company.

Since 2019 the OGDCL top management is hiring its blue-eyed against salaries of millions with abnormally higher perks and privileges which created unrest among the regular employees. The process of hiring of hand-picked to whom the regular employees call as intruders became even a common practice when the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) government promoted  Khalid Subhans as acting managing director of the company . Since Mr Khalid Subhani’s hiring was basically a favour to him as he did not qualify for the post of managing director of oil and gas. The PTI Karachi based mafia led by Asad Umer, a confident of PTI chairman and ousted prime minister Imran Khan took full advantage of promoting Khalid Subhani as acting managing director of OGDCL and used him to inject its blue eyed in OGDCL against the salaries of millions of rupees. Mr Subhani proved  himself loyal to his political master and accepted each order of his political  God fathers and hired every one recommended by them in OGDCL against abnormally higher salaries. Not only Asad Umar, but other top office bearers of PTI government and those who held the constitution positions got share in illegal hiring of their men in the OGDCL.

 

Hiring of hand-picked  ‘intruders’ and that too against salaries of millions with no upper sealing caused severe unrest among the OGDCL regular employees and they started to raise their concern to the top  management including acting MD Mr Khalid Subhani, but it went unnoticed.

 

The regular employees claimed that they were demanding of the top management including acting managing director to stop illegal hiring of outsiders with no experience against salaries of millions in each case, but the management had no interest in addressing the issues of the regular employees and finally they resorted to the strike option.

A regular employee of OGDCL who is part of the protesters  told NEWSMAN on Wednesday that  Mr Khalid Subhani and other executives who were hired on political consideration had siphoned -off billions of rupee in the last four and half years and this sucking of the company resources was still going on without any interval .

 

He said “ Khalid Subhani  and those hired against huge salaries have only one priority and it is to get benefit through procurement  and make their luck “. He referred the cases of Anas Farooq, chief financial officer (CFO),  Amir Salim executive director (Petro Serv), Mr Zia Salahuddin , executive director (Services), Mr Atif Ghafoor Mirza , executive director (Join venture and Business Development ) and Furrukh Saghir executive director (Exploration ).

The hiring of these  executive directors have been made void of merit . Most of those  who have been hired as executive directors of OGDCL were working in junior positions in their previous  companies.

These hiring did not only resulted in unrest among regular employees who have credit of serving OGDCL for decades, but it slowed down  performance of the OGDCL as the new executive directors lacked professional skill and expertise to take the new initiatives  and pay good dividend to the company.

 

Since OGDCL is Pakistan’s largest oil and gas company, hiring of outsiders with little or even no experience shrunk output of the company  and brought overall production of Pakistan’s domestic oil and gas to an alarming level.

 

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has already taken notice of hiring of OGDCL against senior position when there was no regular and permanent managing director of company to take such decisions.

 

The employees also have been demanding de-capping of salaries/ pensions as price hike was biting them hard like other citizen of Pakistan but since 2013 they were not getting increase in salaries and pensions.

This situation finally compelled the regular employees to go for stick to force the top management to stop hiring of blue eyed boys against salaries of millions of rupees and restore promotions of regular employees.

 

Interestingly , OGDCL managing director , Khalid Subhani , is not bothered to listen to protesting employees of his company. He left Pakistan last week for a joyful ride to Dubai for a job which he could do from his office in Islamabad on skyp and over and above it he instead coming back from Dubai and resolve the issue of the protesting employees and restore work at company headquarters in Islamabad  preferred to go to see his family in Karachi.

 

NEWSMAN sent him a questionnaire seeking his point of view on the on-going strike of the employees and put an end to the strike but till filing of these report he did not give his side of the story.