National Assembly Standing Committee on Petroleum on Tuesday recommended permanent appointments on 63 top management posts of the state owned Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) by April end to improve its performance. The committee, chaired by Sardar Talib Hassan Nakia was informed that all the top management posts of the company were occupied by people on acting charge, some of which were continuing since February 2010. Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Petroleum Dr Asim Hussain said that the ministry had already sent a new HR policy for implementation at all the state owned oil and gas entities under which postings on acting charge will be shunned and no promotions would be made without conducting proper tests and interviews. He asked the committee to direct the board of the company to strictly implement the new HR policy.
Barjees Tahir of PML-N pointed out that other than occupying key posts some of the people were having fake degrees. He demanded the degrees of the 63 top officials should be submitted to the committee secretariat within three days to get them verified from the Higher Education Commission.
Acting Managing Director OGDCL Basharat Mirza informed the committee that the company had already sent educational documents of its 1,700 staff members to HEC for verification. So far degrees of 1,000 officials were verified and documents of four junior officials were found fake.
During the last meeting of committee on February 1, OGDCL management refused to share the inquiry reports of massive irregularities in the company saying the reports were confidential and could not be shared with members of the parliamentary committee.
The parliamentary panel also took up the issue of alleged irregularities in OGDCL, amounting to Rs202.16 million. The panel discussed OGDCL’s inquiry report on unnecessary purchase of chemical worth Rs55.130 million ($1.219 million) and loss of Rs5.630 million on account of its sale below cost price. But acting MD told the panel that chemical was not sold below the market prices instead OGDCL sold it on higher prices and earned profit. The committee constituted two sub-committees to further investigate the issues of irregularities in OGDCL.
When Chairman Nakai asked petroleum ministry how much price hike in POL products was proposed for March, Dr Asim Hussain said he was not aware of the situation as it was determined by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority and sent directly to the finance ministry for approval. However, Chairman Nakai condemned any future increase in POL prices saying that the government should abstain from further increasing the prices.
He also criticised the formation of the special committee to look into the increase in POL prices saying it should have included at least some of the members of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Petroleum as they knew the issues better than other members.
