One Mr Sekhar Gupta- who thrives on Thrillers!

I sent the following mail to Mr Shekhar Gupta (sg@expressindia.com) of Indian Express in response to their editorial in Indian Express dated 10/01/2009. As expected I am yet to receive a reply from them.

The following is the text of the mail:

I happened to read your article in Indian Express dated 10/01/2009. And you are one among the many biased, prejudiced individuals who said what ever they want, just because they have access to the powerful media. Someone said deshdrohi, another called us white collared terrorist and yet another called us blackmailers. Calling off the strike is not at all demoralising to us but the way these people called us whatever they want with out even trying the verify the facts and with out even trying to find out our version is what killed our morale. We never wanted to strike in fact and it was forced on us.

Do you atleast know under what sort of conditions these oilmen work and what is their take home salary. You said, we have job security but then do you know that none of us refuse to work on weekends and holidays and work for extended hours day after day. Almost everyone works on a sixth day of the week and half of us work on holidays too. What to do, we would like to spend more time in our in-laws house rather than with our families. We meet the targets set for us with the best possible efficiencies. Why else do you think that the private players and the companies from Middle East employ these people paying them very high salaries? People who resigned 3 - 4 years back are earning atleast 3 - 4 times more than what we earn but we have no regrets for staying with these PSUs. Do you know that most of us are not even getting increments for the past several years and we are only hoping for a decent pay revision and not a greedy one? You people may not understand as you are highly prejudiced and you people have bought the argument of the Petroleum secretary and politicians.

Did you bother to make a comparison with the salary of the bureaucrats and find out why they are paid more even when they sit in AC rooms and roam around in AC cars? No one will have courage to do that. Did you ever try to find out from armed forces if they are happy with the pays scales given to them? They too are unhappy at the way the bureaucrats decide the pay for every one in this country. They cannot go on strike and so they don't. Otherwise anyone will express their dissent to the way the country is ruled by these babus.

Do you think the Oilmen thought about going on a strike on 06.01.2009 and went on strike from 07.01.2009. Did you atleast try to find out how many times the strike notice was given and how many times it was with drawn on assurances from the government. Government never did what they ought to do and now finally they are trying to make scapegoats out of the heads of these oil companies. It is because of these people and their assurances the strike was called off several times and they should be commended for their role in getting the strike deferred for so long. When the notice was given in Nov 2008 do you think the government was correct in announcing the GoM just a few days before the strike and then ask for a months time. They could not have done that immediately after the strike notice was given. The culprits for the strike and the suffering of the people on the road are these very people who procrastinated beyond reasonable limits and forced the aggrieved oilmen to go on strike. It is these people in the government who should be held responsible for this discontent of oil sector employees to simmer and explode. Now we people are afraid and so withdrew but then you should know that when the crude price crosses $50 in the future again exodus starts from these companies. We are not in these PSUs because we are not talented but we are here because we love the country. We are all people educated out of some of the best institutes in this country and that include IITs, IIMs, NITs and some of the reputed universities.

Could you not think for a while that the government saw merit in the demands of oil sector employees and that is the reason they formed the GoM. We did not ask for something out of the world. We only wanted the Justice Rao committee report implemented with a few changes. When the government can accept the Central pay commission report with figures that are more than what was recommended by the committee what is wrong with PRC for PSUs. The people who were in the central pay commission were not good and so their recommendations had to be upgraded while for the PSUs they were again inefficient and recommended more and so recommendations for us had to be downgraded. If that is so please ask the government to ban the people in these two committees from being engaged in future.

Lastly, in the news paper of the same day there was an argument saying that private sector should be encouraged and should be allowed to operate. The person writing this article should atleast be knowing how many outlets the private players closed when the crude price was too high. Now these private players will refuse to produce because the crude price is too low and unremunerative. Ask the government to invoke ESMA and NSA against these people. Let this person who wrote this article recommend this to the government. All of you people roaming around in fuel guzzling machines roam around happily using the fuel produced by these hardworking oilmen and then subsidised for your comfort. If there are private players the government will be happy to announce bail out packages in the name of reviving and giving boost to the economy and they very much love to do that. They will not bother about imposing windfall tax or any such thing if they are earning good profits in order to subsidise common man. They will only overburden these PSUs with subsidy burden and then ask them to compete with private players without providing a level playing filed. They are least bothered about reviving and boosting the morale of simple living and hard working PSU employees.

I only hope that better wisdom prevails on these Media thinkers and that they try to understand the problem in the right perspective. Let me assure you that I am not one of those who favor going on strike and inconveniencing public but then there should be another choice to exercise. Also I hope everyone understands that healthy PSUs are very much required for good health of this nation and this is possible only with efficient and motivated workforce.

All our grievances are genuine. Support us if you can but don't malign us, don't demotivate us.

Best reagrds,

Chandra Sekhar