Panel orders removal of contract staff at NOC

KATHMANDU, AUG 14

The parliamentary Industry, Commerce and Consumer Welfare Committee on Thursday directed the Ministry of Commerce and Supply to immediately remove staff hired on contract basis at Nepal Oil Corporation ( NOC ).

The debt-ridden corporation had recently hired 80 persons on contract basis. The House panel said that NOC had made the appointments without following the required procedure. It has told the ministry and NOC to recruit staff only after

conducting an Organization and Management (O&M) survey.

“At a time when NOC has a debt burden of more than Rs20 billion, it has hired a large number of temporary employees without fulfilling the necessary procedures,” the committee said.

It has ordered the ministry to assess NOC ’s staff need and also submit details of the current staff structure and administrative costs and conduct an O&M survey before approving the appointment of new employees.

This is not the first time that NOC has been engulfed in controversy for appointing new staff. Sources said that Commerce Minister Sunil Bahadur Thapa and State Minister Giri Bahadur KC have pressurized NOC to take in their party cadres.

Currently, NOC has 494 permanent employees and 109 employees appointed on contract basis about one and a half year ago. An NOC source said that hiring 80 new employees had put a huge financial burden on the corporation and that it would have to spend Rs10 million per month on their salaries.

NOC Managing Director Gopal Bahadur Khadka, however, said that the new staff had been hired on daily wage basis. “As appointing them through contract basis would have taken a long time, we hired them directly,” said Khadka.

Following the parliamentary committee’s directives, Khadka said that they would initiate the legal procedure to appoint new employees.

NOC owes Rs21 billion to the government, Employees Provident Fund, Citizen Investment Trust and other financial institutions. As per the revised oil tariff sent by its sole supplier Indian Oil Corporation, NOC ’s monthly projected profit in the oil business stands at Rs850 million.

Source: The Kathmandu post