The three employees receiving the axe are the ones working on daily wage and contract basic. Those suspended include six officer level staff and helpers involved in loading and unloading of fuels.
“The action was taken after the NOC board, last week, instructed the management not to spare anyone involved in corruption,” Digambhar Jha, NOC managing director, told myrepublica.
About a month ago, NOC board had suspended depot chief Dinesh Yadav and his deputy Prakash Sharma after a team formed to study sharp rise in oil leakage at the depot found them involved in embezzling the stock.
The board had charged them of stealing fuel and reporting the loss as rise in technical loss, which are unavoidable, to the head office.
The government, too, had formed a high-level probe team led by a joint secretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies (MoCS). Interestingly, the decision to sack and suspend employees has been taken before the committee submitted its report.
Jha told myrepublica that the action was taken in a bid to start probe against individual staffers. “We hope to complete the investigation within 45 days. By then, we will know who are behind the wrongdoings and who are executing them,” Jha said, adding that further actions against them would again be taken as per the findings of the probe.
To execute the action, NOC had first called all the staffers at the depot to the head office in Kathmandu and issued them the suspension letter. It had instantly deputed another set of technical staffers to fill the vacant posts.
Meanwhile, sources at MoCS said the investigation team that the Ministry formed has completed necessary field study and would submit its report soon. Apart from the extent of anomalies, the team will also report on the situation of technical loss in other depots and make recommendations for streamlining NOC´s depot operations, particularly to plug leakages in the name of technical loss.
Technical loss in petroleum trade is unavoidable but in the case at Amlekhgunj, Yadav and his deputy had inflicted 50 percent higher loss than the permitted limit in a year, which in monetary term was worth Rs 30 million. During the period, Yadav and his team had raised technical loss of petrol at depot to 0.8 percent (of total volume of oil handled by the depot) from 0.57 percent and diesel to 0.7 percent from 0.4 percent of the past.
The variation appears negligible, but since Amlekhgunj handles some two-third of oil imports, it generates huge money, said officials. Because of this fact, top NOC management, Ministry officials and Ministers take special interest in appointing staff close to them at the depot.
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