Govt oilmen flock to private sector cos

TOI Chennai News dtd 10-02-09

Jeeva TNN

Chennai: But in the oil sector the story is different. Despite fears of a global recession, officials of governmentrun oil companies continue to join private sector which offer better pay package. Sources said IndianOil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) and ONGC lost around 1,000 officials to their private competitors last year.
In Chennai alone, ONGC lost 15 officials from geology and geophysics divisions to companies like Reliance, Hardy Oil and Cairn Energy. Some even joined firms in Kuwait and Malaysia. Those who left have 20 to 25 years of experience.
Officials said attrition rate was on the rise in ONGC. 370 middle and senior level officials quit last year compared with 307 in 2007.
According to sources, around 600 officials of IndianOil, BPCL and HP quit in the last two years. Most of them geologists, geophysicists, production engineers, drilling engineers and reservoir engineers and from finance and marketing division.
“There is job insecurity in private sector because of the economic crisis but we can get higher pay package. As most of the branches in the oil sector are specialised fields and those who are working in oil PSUs are well experienced, private companies offer salaries five times of what we are drawing now,” said an IndianOil official.
To cope with the increasing attrition rate at higher levels, IndianOil is recruiting 500 officials, source said. However, many senior officials in oil PSUs said their companies were recruiting only at the entry level and freshers cannot fill the vacuum at higher levels.
Many officials are awaiting a pay revision which the Centre is expected to be announced soon. “Though even a pay revision cannot positively match the salaries in private sector, we want it should be satisfactory to some extent. Otherwise, attrition would inevitably go up,” said a senior official with ONGC.
Last month, oil company officials went on a two-day strike demanding the Centre to revise their pay scales without any delay. When the government took out newspaper advertisements saying they were drawing a month salary of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh and their agitation was unreasonable, around 100 officials in the city filed applications under Right To Information Act seeking details to justify its statement. According to them, the government resorted to ‘false’ propaganda as most of the officials in oil PSUs who have been working for 20 to 25 years were drawing Rs 50,000 to Rs 55,000.