The Inquiry Commission on shortage of petroleum products has strongly recommended departmental/penal action against the incumbent Director General (DG) Oil for passing flagrantly illegal orders regarding allocation of import/local quotas.
The Inquiry Commission report on shortage of petroleum products said the Commission strongly recommends departmental/penal action against the incumbent DG Oil for passing flagrantly illegal orders regarding allocation of import/local quotas. Strong departmental/penal action is also recommended against lmran All Abro and the other associates who had been maneuvering the unlawful affairs in the Petroleum Division.
Imran Abro is reportedly the kingpin in the Petroleum Division and calls the shots on behalf of his superiors. Pertinent to mention that the gentleman is also the signee of the so-called ban letter (25 March, 20). He has been serving in MoEPD for the last 06 years without any legal ground.
Under the Rules of Business, a contract employee of a private company (Inter-State Gas Systems (Pvt. Ltd) under MoEPD) cannot serve on deputation/attachment. All such ‘Stand-out-bad-characters’ must not go unpunished.
The Inquiry Commission stated that the role of Secretary MoEPD cannot be ignored. Apparently, he remained
encapsulated in a vacuum, both prior to and during the crisis period. No satisfactory explanation has been offered as to why the word rationalization, approved by Cabinet, was transformed into ban/cancellation of imports.
Likewise, how would the flagrant violations of OMCs spread over a prolonged period, could be ignored by him? The Commission also recommends departmental reprimand/action against the Secretary Ministry of Energy, Petroleum Division.
The Commission also recommended strict action against officials of the Department of Explosives (working under MoEPD) found involved in the issuance of unlawful Forms ‘K’ & ‘L’ to retail outlets and storage depots respectively.
The commission said that the monetary losses forced upon PSO, a state entity, during the days of shortage must be equitably recovered from the OMCs which creamed off the unlawful profits through hoarding, slowing down or drying out their retail outlets. How can the cruel story of the oil ship ‘Ploutus’ go unpunished where the PSO ship was forced to discharge earlier by MoEPD by violating the priority-queue to delay the berthing of ‘Ploutus’ (discussed in chapter 13).
The quantification of these easy-but-illegal gains by OMCs has been attempted in Chapter 9. The Commission recommends that all such unlawful gains be recovered from OMCs by the Federal Government as these profits rightfully belonged to the general consumers at large.
The Commission recommends that a monitoring cell must be established in the MoEPD. The cell should collect all relevant data from OMCs (import, local uplifting, daily/monthly sales of OMCs, refinery import/production program etc.).
This cell would record data of every aspect of OMCs just like OCAC. Only this data would have legal sanctity and the OMCs could also be held accountable in case of spurious figures. Presently OCAC has a total staff of 12 persons. This cell may operate with twice that number but all data would be directly available to the MoEPD and the GoP whenever required. This way, OCAC, a non-statutory private body, would eventually be curtailed from its heretofore decisive role in data collection, berthing priorities, IFEM claims and PRMs. These areas must be the exclusive domain of MoEPD, it added.
