Sr. bat for ONGC colleagues 2R R Goswami & Mitul Thakkar ~ AHMADABAD AFTER displaying their dexterity on the field, Indian cricketers: Virender Sehwag and Ishant, Sharma are batting for the cause of their Oil & Nat-— ural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) brethren, Employed with ONGC as deputy managerand HR exeeiitive; respectively, their pay slips aré doing rounds allovertodrive homea point tothe Centre + which is yer to implement fecommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission on ONGC employees. ‘The ONGC employees are voluntarily sharing their payslips with the media to counter claims of thebeiad thatthey draw fat pay. Ind } .deritally, the pay slips that catch: attention be- > long to Mr Sehwag and Mr Sharma.. Schwag's salary stip for Jamiiary 2009 shows - that he took hornie Rs 39,213 while Rs 11,332 was “deducted as income'tax from his gross pay of Rs 60,200: Ishant, whose gross nay is Rs 32,820, te- “ceived RS 26,079in, Rs.50 lakh to support the officials who were oe without any formal or issuance of charges! beet as. required under. law. Even former ONGC offi- dals are coming forwardin S support of thefouremploy- DIFFERENTPITCH: . - ees in Gujarat, The move-_< Sehwag on song, ment is gathering steam in Dehradun, Delhi and Mumbai offices of: ‘ONGC. Requesting anonymity a senior ONGC official said, “We have kicked off a signature and mass communication campaigns to sensitise our board members and other authorities concemed about unreasonable actions taken against our colleagues. ‘We are also offended by the Centre's attempts to portray usas traitors andits attempt to mislead the nation about our pay structure. Our officials are * equipped with degrees from renowned institu- tions like ITs and RECs and are not interested in earning bad name for the organisation.” He added thatevery year 600-700 employees quit ONGC to Join private sector due to its poor pay structure. ONGC employees are shy of making any com- ments on record at the moment. They are waiting for the outcome of the corporation’s board meet- ing scheduled on January 28 wherein the ciarifi- cations submitted by the sacked employees willbe considered. It is learnt that in their communica- tion to ONGC board, the sacked employees have stated that they didn’t instigate any employees to resort to strike and that it wasa collective decision. Also, they kept the installations live during their strike so that operationscan be resumed tonormal- cylevelas soon as the issue gets resolved.