International Presence

Some of the international delegates at the founding conference

THE inaugural session of the foundation conference of the Petroleum and Gas Workers’ Federation of India (PGWFI) was attended by distinguished trade union leadership of the petroleum and energy sector trade unions from France, United Kingdom, Egypt, Libya, Russia, Bangladesh etc besides the leadership of International Energy & Miners Organisation (IEMO).

In the inaugural session, Alian Simon, general secretary of IEMO, addressed the delegates and explained about the deliberations and decisions of the meeting of the Executive Bureau of IEMO held at Haldia on November 12-13, 2005. Energy sector is vital for the life and living of the common people but the capitalists seek to make business with energy at the cost of common people, he said. Pointing out that the onslaught of privatisation and imperialist wars are being imposed on humanity for as part of this strategy, he called upon energy workers worldwide to jointly fight against this conspiracy.

Alongside the foundation conference of the federation, Haldia also hosted the meeting of the International Steering Committee of Petroleum Trade Unions. Among those who participated in this meeting included Fawzy Abdel Bary Hussein, general secretary of Arab Federation of Petroleum, Mining and Chemical Workers, Cairo, Egypt; Mohamed Fadiel Abusata, general secretary, African Federation of Oil and Natural Gas Workers, Tripoli, Libya; Robert Ippoliti, international secretary, National Oil and Chemical Workers’ Federation, Paris, France;  Md. Jane Alam and  Munir Uddin Ahmed president and general secretary respectively of the  Bangladesh Oil & Gas Workers’ Federation; and Swadesh Dev Roye, secretary CITU. It is worthwhile to note that these leaders represented the regions which together account for nearly 70 per cent of the total oil reserves of the world. All these leaders also attended and addressed the inaugural session of the conference.

TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION

The international meeting of the petroleum workers’ trade unions at Haldia has been in continuation of the two previous world conferences of petroleum and gas workers held at Paris in October, 1999 and at Kolkata in March, 2003.

The unanimous resolve to launch an International Federation of Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Workers has been reiterated at the Haldia meeting also. The next meeting of the steering committee will be held in Paris on January 20-21, 2006, which will be followed by an extended meeting of trade unions from around ten counties representing the different continents at Cairo some time in the middle of 2006 where the date and venue for the formal foundation conference of the international federation shall be fixed.

About the perspective organisational understanding of the forthcoming international federation, it has been repeatedly reiterated that the aims and objectives of the federation would be to oppose the global onslaught of imperialist regimes, fight against the oil multinational companies, intervene in abnormal rise in price of oil, protect the interest of developing countries and the people all over the world, including the employees of the industry.