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The committee headed by Ganesh Dhakal, joint secretary at the Ministry of Supplies, has submitted its report to Minister for Commerce and Supplies The report has reaffirmed the NOC´s initial findings that its depot head, his deputy and other officers had inflicted a huge loss to NOC in the name of technical loss. [break]
“The staffers of all levels have been found engaged in the anomaly. They pocketed handsome money and tried to veil their wrongdoings by reporting unnatural rise in technical loss,” said a source.
The team has recommended stringent action against the then depot chief Dinesh Yadav and his deputy Prakash Sharma for embezzling the stock, and appropriate actions against other 22 staffers who worked at the depot then.
For the first time, the team has also recommended the NOC board to force the corrupt officials to repay the money. Such a provision, however, is absent in NOC´s regulations.
NOC board earlier this month suspended 21 staffers, including six officers, and fired three others working on contract basis on charges of their involvement in the anomaly. “Now that the final report of the committee has come, we will soon launch further actions against the wrongdoers,” said NOC Chief Digambhar Jha. He told myrepublica.com that the board meeting will be called soon.
Technical loss in petroleum trade is unavoidable, but in this particular case at Amlekhgunj, Yadav and his staff had inflicted 50 percent higher loss than the permitted limit.
During the period, the depot´s technical loss for petrol had soared to 0.8 percent (of total volume of oil it handled) 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-thirds of oil imports, it generates huge money. Because of it, top NOC management, ministry officials and ministers take special interest in appointing staff close to them at the depot.
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