ONGC directors face travel allowance axe: Media report

THIS will not find any favour among the directors at Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), the Maharatna PSU as the top officials are set to lose the perk of claiming full travel allowance and comforts while working in Delhi that enabled them claim huge cash on top of their salaries, says a report published in a leading financial daily.
The report says directors are officially based at Dehradun, the company HQ, but mostly operate from Delhi and end up...
being on a perennial tour to Delhi. In this process the officials end up claiming daily allowance, residential and any other benefit available to a visiting top executive.
An oil ministry decision will now end this, adds the news report.
For directors, the headquarters will be changed to Delhi, the report added quoting sources.
“The company’s headquarters will remain at Dehradun. The shift from Dehradun to Delhi is only with respect to directors’ base. This will help us save public money,” said a source.
Right now, most directors have company-paid accommodations in Delhi and Dehradun or another city. The houses, called transit accommodation, are in posh localities of Delhi with monthly lease of Rs 2 lakh or more.
Another perk directors will lose is daily allowance of about Rs 1,800 or roughly Rs 50,000 per month. The food and transport is also paid for by ONGC.
“As per terms and conditions of their appointment, the ‘headquarters’ of CMD and functional directors is Dehradun. However, in the terms and conditions of appointment of director (onshore) received from ministry of petroleum and natural gas on 27.09.2016, his headquarters has been mentioned as ‘New Delhi’,” the report further said quoting ONGC source.
Similar communications are being sent to other directors and chairman as well. “Chairman & managing director/directors are provided with transit accommodation instead of hotel. However, during their visits to Dehradun, they avail ONGC guest house. CMD/directors are not claiming any DA for their stay at Delhi," ONGC said.
At present, ONGC has seven functional directors, including the chairman, two government nominee directors and three independent directors, according to its annual report.
The Maharatna PSU is the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in India, contributing around 70 per cent of Indian domestic production. The crude oil is the raw material used by downstream companies like IOC, BPCL, HPCL to produce petroleum products like Petrol, Diesel, Kerosene, Naphtha, Cooking Gas-LPG. ONGC is India’s Top Energy Company and ranks 20th among global energy majors (Platts). ONGC ranks 14th in ‘Oil and Gas operations’ and 220th overall in Forbes Global 2000. Acclaimed for its Corporate Governance practices, Transparency International has ranked ONGC 26th among the biggest publicly traded global giants.