ONGC contract workers give in

First day of interviews peaceful

The interview process for contract employees at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) Vadodara and Ahmedabad facilities began peacefully today.

"The interviews are being conducted peacefully at Ahmedabad and we hope the process to continue in the coming days as well," said V R Tamhankar, general manager and head for ONGC regional office, Vadodara.

This marks a climbdown for the term-based workers, who were demanding permanent employment and renewal of their contracts without going through the interview process.

Earlier, workers had decided against co-operating with the ONGC management by boycotting the first two calls for interviews. ONGC had then issued a final notice for the interviews yesterday.

However, the workers are still not satisfied with the term based recruitments and fresh interview calls.

The working president of Employees Mazdoor Sabha, K P Ravindranathan said: "The workers are appearing for interviews but ONGC has not made the pay package and terms of employment clear yet. It is an unethical HR practice by the navaratna public sector enterprise. We also have doubts that many of the employees may not be selected for the renewed employment."

However, Tamhankar denied the charge. "We are willing to re-employ all the workers as they are efficient and acquainted with their job at ONGC. We have planned a better pay package for the renewed employment for the workers. We have also lined up the interviews for over 100 workers whose terms are ending in the coming months," clarified Tamhankar.

The interviews for different categories have been scheduled from January 7 to 10.

ONGC would be free to recruit workers from outside in place of those who will opt to not to remain present during the final interview call.

The third and final interview calls have been issued for 419 of the 577 class IV employees whose terms has ended on December 31, 2004.