National Assembly's (NA) Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Resources, scheduled to meet today (Thursday), would probe into the suspicious appointments of 184 officials in the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL), Business Recorder has learnt.
According to sources the management of OGDCL has submitted a list of their top 13 officials, to the standing committee, who were appointed on lucrative packages without fulfilling the recruitment criteria. Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources Syed Naveed Qamar would also attend the meeting and respond to the queries over these appointments.
The company management has hired 184 employees during the last four years. "As many as 13 officials were appointed on top positions of executive directors and general managers during this time period and none met the criteria of the required qualification/experience," sources said. Each of these officials are drawing salaries in the range of 400,000 to 1000,000 per month, they added. Managing Director (MD) OGDCL Mahboob Shah Alam has recently sacked some top contractual officials but even then, many others continue to work at lucrative packages, they said.
Appointments of contractual officials, on top positions, were made in 2009 through advertisements in the newspapers. "All these appointments were reportedly, either backed by the members of the board, chairman of the board, the MD or the presidency," sources said, and added that now the minister petroleum as well as the MD OGDCL have started appointing their blue-eyed boys in place of the sacked ones.
The MD OGDCL issued termination letters to the Executive Director (ED) Human Resource (HR) Fasih Azhar and the General Manger (GM) Systems Fawad Ahmad. Earlier, the MD had sacked the GM Policy Zeeshan Asmatullah, who is said to be a nephew of the former chairman board of directors OGDCL Farooq Rahmatullah, they said. "Now the Secretary Petroleum Kamran Lashari wants the Joint Secretary Petroleum Arif Ibrahim to be deputed as the ED HR," the sources said.
They also said another official Momin Khan, said to be a close friend of the secretary petroleum, is also being tipped to get deputed in the OGDCL on a handsome package. Momin is currently working in the ministry of environment and has worked with Lashari when he was the chairman Capital Development Authority (CDA).
"The management of OGDCL is currently pressurising the ED Joint Venture Masood Nabi, a contractual employee, to either resign from his post or accept a demotion to the post of the GM," sources said. Another contractual officer, GM Projects Qamar Zaman Soomo is still working despite strong observations of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) who said in his report, for the audit year 2009-10, that Zaman's appointment was made in violation of the rules and regulations.