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Oil PSUs' staff to go on strike over wages
Work at refineries and oil and gas production may also come to a halt due to the strike.
Officers of public sector oil companies will go on an indefinite strike from Wednesday that may cripple aviation fuel supply within hours and hit auto fuel supplies in a couple of days.
Work at refineries and oil and gas production may also come to a halt due to the strike.
"We will strike work from 6 am tomorrow morning as the government has failed to keep its promise on raising wages," said Ashok Singh, convenor of Oil Sector Officers' Association, a representative body of executives of oil PSUs.
Though Singh claimed officers of all the 12 public sector firms would join the strike, Petroleum Ministry sources said there were indications that Indian Oil Corp, country's largest retailer with just under 50 per cent market share, and il India Ltd, India's second largest oil producer, may not participate in the strike.
The worst hit would be Oil and Natural Gas Corp, India's largest oil and gas producer, and refiners Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd.
Singh charged the PSU managements with creating confusion and "misleading" Petroleum Minister Murli Deora that there would not be a strike.
"On January 11, 2000, the PSU managements kept misleading the ministry that there would be no strike but when we actually struck work, grounding aviation facilities, the then minister had to intervene," he said.
At a meeting with OSOA last week, the oil ministry agreed that the salary grievance was genuine but the Department of Public Enterprises stuck to its previous stand of not being able to bring about an enhancement in remuneration.