HT CORRESPONDENT
SIVASAGAR, June 1: Several organisations including ATASU, Sangrami Yuva Parishad, AKRASU, Asom Yuva Chatta Parishad, SC Students Union, Jatiya Sangrami Sena Asom, Asomiya Yuva Mancha, Ahom Sena, Maria Students Union, announced fresh stir against ONGC Assam Asset for several reasons they consider harmful to the people of the district through a press meet here on Saturday.
Among other things, the organizations demand termination of all ONGC privatization moves.
Secondly, they demand all efforts to transfer departments and wings of the hydrocarbon exploration and production giant from Sivasagar. Thirdly, the organisation leaders want ONGC to stop overlooking the interest of the local contractors and award contracts to companies outside the state at the behest of an alleged section of the anti-Assamese lobby of executives. They claim that it is the reason behind the closure of tender processes for light vehicles for eight months.
On June 6, the organizations called for a mass demonstration before ONGC Assam Asset HQ in Nazira. In the second phase, the organisations’ workers will barricade the main entrance to the ONGC HQ in Nazira and Sivasagar. Finally, the student and youth organisations will close down all exploration and production installations in the entire area of operations.
While addressing the media, Debajit Dutta, president, Asom Yuva Chatra Parishad, said that ONGC has been operating in three upper Assam districts, Sivasagar, Charaideo, and Jorhat, and has been contributing Crires of rupees to the Central and State government coffers. But of late, a powerful lobby of industrialists and bureaucrats outside the state has been working clandestinely to shift ONGC Assam Asset out of the state. To deprive the local contractors and entrepreneurs, the ONGC management has begun floating tenders for works above one crore.
Chitu Barua, president, of Jatiya Sangrami Sena Asom, alleged that the ONGC is very tactfully shifting one important department after another from Sivasagar to Delhi, Kolkata, and other places. Recently, the Geological Core laboratory was shifted to Jorhat.
He said that ONGC has been in the field of hydrocarbon exploration and production for over six decades in Sivasagar and the people of the district have donated their lands and resources to the corporation. But now, it is indulging in anti-Sivasagar policies and activities detrimental to the local peoples’ interest.
Parashjyoti Das, secretary of SC Students’ Union, said that the Sivasagar District Administration is also to be blamed in this connection as it had been facilitating such anti-local activities of the ONGC for long as middlemen. Jintu Mech, of Assam Yuva Chatra Sanmilan, said that ONGC adopted a drastic employee retrenchment policy and reduced its permanent employee strength from over 11 thousand a decade back to over 3300 now by resorting to the Men Management Contract system for employee recruitment.
