ONGC makes northeast attractive for staff
A lack of good schools and housing is often blamed for making northeast India an unattractive destination for ONGC officers and their families.
However, a new ONGC policy will hopefully encourage officers posted northeast to take their families. On November 9 (2024), ONGC released a new order entitled Review of Special Provisions of NE (Northeast) postings and Transfer-related provisions.
Under the order, ONGC has cancelled the Quarterly Transfer Facility (QTF), where non-native employees posted to 'difficulty' level Category-1 areas or the northeast received two weeks of leave plus paid air tickets to visit families elsewhere in India every three months. Vaskar Kumar Barai, a GM in HR, wrote that the QTF scheme would stop from April 1 (2025) and be replaced by a new STF (Special Transit Facility) procedure.
Under STF, employees posted to the northeast can only take a maximum of ten days of leave twice a year, including travel time. This will be limited to all non-native executives at Category-1 locations living independently and below CGM and L3 levels.
Another significant change is that executives who once worked in northeast India will no longer be offered a posting elsewhere of their choice. "To be discontinued for employees transferred with effect from 2022 and employees who joined NE on fresh appointment on and after April 1 (2022)," says the office order.
Similarly, this facility will be discontinued for employees transferred from 2022 to Bokaro in Jharkhand or Karaikal in Puducherry after April 1 (2022). Until now, employees transferred from northeast India to a new location were incentivised with two months of basic pay plus a dearness allowance.
Now, employees living independently on an on/off duty pattern (where a field officer works continuously for two weeks and visits their family for two weeks) will receive a month's basic pay and an allowance. "Several cost-cutting tweaks have been added to the new policy," says a source.
Postings to Nazira, Sivasagar, Guwahati, Jorhat and Silchar in Assam and Agartala in Tripura are in Difficulty Level Category 1; Karaikal is classed as Difficulty Level Category 2, while Difficulty Level Category 3 includes Cambay, Kakinada and Rajahmundry.