Oil strike called off, negotiations on with Naik

Both Naik and OSOA convener Ashok singh said the strike was being withdrawn and that negotiations would continue.

The strike is roughly estimated to have caused loss of over Rs 500 crore in terms of production of crude and refinery throughput.

Naik told reporters that all the refineries would start normal functioning from tomorrow and added that government was still working out the total production loss on account of the strike that began at 6 am on Tuesday.

Singh said, "we withdrew on the assurances of the Petroleum Minister. The dialogue with the government is still continuing."

His colleague Sridhar Vyas said that Naik had assured to take their demand for lowering the periodicity of wage revision from ten to five years to competent authorities, which is cabinet.

IOC sources said the corporation would suffer production losses of over Rs 200 crore at its seven refineries, while ONGC sources said that the direct crude production loss to the company would be over Rs 60 crore.

Sources said that overall production loss in all 13 oil PSUs could be estimated between Rs 500 crore to Rs 600 crore.

The OSOA officials had sought protection of personnel pay, protection of rate of classification of house rent allowance and compensatory allowances and also wanted 100 per cent neutralisastion of dearness allowance from January one 1996 as against January one 1997, Naik said.

"I have said that I would try my best to see that these issues are resolved," he said adding that with regard to the revision of periodicity of pay scales to five years as against 10 years the decision had to be taken up by the cabinet.

Naik said with regard to periodicity the issue was also related to other ministries and any decision on it could be arrived only after consultation with these ministries.

The OSOA employees had on Monday met the Industry Minister Manohar Joshi, who, also said that he would look into the problem.

OSOA, which represents about 45,000 officers of the 13 oil companies, had gone on strike on Tuesday leading to the shutting down of IOC’s seven refineries and a few refineries of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and exploration and production wells of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.