Manoj Jain's emotional e-mail to GAIL staff
GAIL's new chairman and managing director Manoj Jain has emailed an emotionally charged letter to more than 4500 employees in an attempt to soothe fears over the government's move to split it into two companies.
Jain sent out the five-paragraph letter in PDF format on February 14 after taking over as company boss. Indirectly referring to the GAIL unbundling, Jain said: "There are undoubtedly challenges as well as opportunities in our path ahead and so has it been in all these decades where we have strived to co-create a fabled history for GAIL."
But Jain, attempting to boost morale, stresses that "with our (GAIL's) preparedness and action, I am confident that we would retain our premier market position as well as stakeholder preference." In early February, news broke that the oil ministry had sent a note to the cabinet seeking approval to separate GAIL's pipeline business into a separate company for possible sale to an investor.
GAIL's main business after the split would be the marketing of gas and petrochemicals production. "GAIL employees are a worried lot," a company source tells us.
"Nobody knows what tomorrow holds." Jain is believed to be against splitting GAIL.