People's Democracy

  United Movement Necessary To Resist 

Attack On The Oil Sector

A WIDENING attack is brought down on the oil sector through selling off shares, privatisation, and ‘merger-and-integration.’ The workers and employees must build up a strong united movement to resist the assaults. All-India general secretary of the CITU, Chittabrata Majumdar said this while inaugurating the 19th conference of the ONGC Workmen’s Association in Kolkata. The conference was held over April 17-18, 2005.

Chittabrata Majumdar said that the issue of self-reliance was deeply embedded in the oil sector. Once the union government chose to depend on the ONGC for purposes of oil exploration and oil extraction in a bigger way than it was doing at this point of time, the dependency on oil import would lessen. At the same time, more resources would be created and more employment generated.

Majumdar regretted the fact that the union government would not heed the big potential that existed in the Bengal basin for oil exploration and in a most fruitful manner. He also expressed surprise at the ONGC management that had chosen to stand down once the task of digging oil wells had progressed apace in places like Ishapur, Golf Green, Deganga, and Diamond Harbour.

Going into the details of the strange behaviour of the ONGC authorities, Chittabrata Majumdar pointed out how they had refused to put in place sophisticated digging instruments in places like Deganga and had moved away from the task citing ‘immensity of subterranean pressure building up and destroying implements.’

Majumdar noted also that when tenders had been floated for oil exploration in the Bengal basin, the ONGC would not give some very vital information connected to oil exploration in the area. Majumdar declared that the ONGC was reined in at the behest of the US imperialism to give free play to MNC’s in this vital sector. All the workers and employees in the oil sector must stand united and fight off the attacks being brought down here with increasing intensity.

CPI(M) MP, Dipankar Mukherjee said that apart from strengthening the TU’s in the oil sector, TU activities must be build up in the private sector as well. Mukherjee said that there were efforts afoot to privatise the oil sector. He accused the union government to be in collusion with private sector corporate houses like Reliance while selling off shares in the oil sector.

The ongoing effort, said Mukherjee, to ‘merge and integrate’ various oil sector PSU’s was another initiative that the union government had taken up to go in for big lay-offs of workers and employees. If the oil sector was made to become private, the nation’s economy itself would be put on the line, and to this the workers and employees would never agree. The way out was to build up stronger and bigger movements.(BP)