As a responsible corporate citizen, uplift of the socio economic life of the people in and around its operational areas has been a focus area of ONGC.
In Assam too, where it had started its journey in 1960, ONGC has been continuously standing by the people of Assam and contributing a lot in terms of employment generation, promotion of education, skill development, strengthening health infrastructure and other infrastructure development.
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ONGC, therefore requests the people of Assam, especially those residing around its operational areas to join hands with the company to uplift the socio economic aspects of the upper Assam area.
It is worth-mentioning that, over the past few years ONGC has undertaken many significant developmental projects such as Super 30 Program for deserving meritorious students where in 70 students secured seats in IITs, NITs and other premiere engineering institutes of the country.
To augment quality healthcare in Assam and north-eastern region, ONGC has funded Rs 316 crore to establish the state of the art Swargdeo Sukafa Multi-Specialty hospital in Sivasagar enabling quality health care at affordable cost.
In an effort to expand employment opportunities in the recent past, Assam Asset has empaneled 113 civil contractors for workover sites with a contract value of Rs 37 crore.
The company has also given 350 individual car owner-cum drivers on a contract for four years creating more employment.
In the last few years, ONGC had directly recruited 1486 local unemployed youths.
Recently a computer based online test was conducted to recruit 308 junior level staff for various trades.
Besides, officers were also being recruited from the campuses of Universities of Assam.
Currently, 700 students of Assam were given an opportunity under apprenticeship programme to enhance their employability skill sets.
These initiatives have been highly lauded by the beneficiaries and State Government officials of Assam.
In continuation of its developmental efforts, ONGC has recently taken an initiative to put in place an annual rate contract for construction of its drill sites used for drilling of wells, for a period of three years instead of tendering the same on site by site basis.
The said ARC will give ample opportunities to all the contractors irrespective of their financial category whether big, medium and small for award of work for a period of three years.
Every site will be developed by four contractors, both small as well as big.
Through this ARC, even the small contractors shall be able to work directly with ONGC instead of working through big contractors.
Further, it is reiterated that the ARC is aimed at creating opportunities for more people and curtail repetitive tendering work, which consumes large number of man-hours.
However, in-spite of all the above efforts of ONGC to foster development in the region, a handful of people have been spreading ill image of ONGC as an anti Assamese company.
This has been impacting the morale of the ONGC employees and creating a sense of insecurity at all the times.
In the context of ARC also, few are opposing this initiative of ONGC for ARC and have given 100 hour bandh calls people because of certain reasons best known to them.
ONGC would like to state that each day’s bandh of ONGC Assam Asset operations leads to a loss of 2000 Tonnes of oil and one million standard cubic metres of gas per day resulting into loss of crores of rupees on a daily basis to the nation in general and Assam in particular.
ONGC once again reiterated that it is fully committed to development of its operational areas including enhancement of employment opportunities, betterment of medical and education infrastructure.
The company earnestly requested the agitating organizations not to resort to proposed 100 hours ONGC bandh.
ONGC also appeals to the people and business partners to cooperate and to withdraw the proposed ONGC bandh to ensure uninterrupted supply of oil and gas for the nation’s growth.