Musings: Informnation

Sabina Sehgal Saikia still missing in Taj terror attack

written by Unknown at Friday, November 28, 2008

Sabina Sehgal Saikia, the resident food critic of India’s largest selling English newspaper The Times of India, is still missing, 48 hours after the hostage crisis began at The Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay.
Delhi-based Sabina was in Bombay for the wedding reception of fellow Times editor Bachi Karkaria’s son on Wednesday. She returned to her suite in The Taj early complaining of fatigue, according to a report in the newspaper but has not been heard from since Thursday morning.
“I received the last SMS from her at 0130 hrs IST (Thursday). It her last SMS and she was very worried,” her husband Shantanu Saikia said. “The SMS was sent to Taj’s PRO as well.”
About 20 minutes before that, hotel employees had got an SMS from Sabina saying: ”they are in my bathroom”.

Accordingto one report from Internet Sabina was on the sixth floor of the hotel.
Talking to this newspaper, her husband said that the wing she was staying in was the first to be attacked by the terrorists. The room was among the first ones that caught fire.

She was continuously sending messages to her family and friends. She was hiding under her bed and had closed the lights of her room. Her last message was a frightening one saying “They are in my bathroom”. After this SMS to her husband no call or message got her reply.

Her husband said he tried to call her several times but the phone was switched off.

Mobile telephone records shows that the last signals from her mobile was received from a place named Raigarh .

I pray for her safety.

Strike in PSU on Pay Hike/ wage revision

written by Unknown at Wednesday, November 26, 2008

NEW DELHI: India’s 14 state-run oil sector companies’ 55,000 officers plan to go on an indefinite strike beginning December 2 this year, as they are dissatisfied with the quantum of pay revision approved for them by the government after a gap of 10 years.
Loss in crude production due to strike will result in upstream (exploration & production) oil companies losing Rs 225 crore per day, and downstream (refining & marketing) companies losing Rs 900 crore per day, Oil Sector Officers’ Association’s President Amit Kumar told reporters.
The largest explorer and producer Oil and Natural Gas Corp will alone lose Rs 183 crore a day and the largest refiner and marketer Indian Oil Corp will alone lose about Rs 600 crore per day, Kumar said.
The government’s claim of 300% hike in the pay scales of the public sector undertakings’ employees is not true, Kumar told reporters.
“On the contrary, the actual rise is a meagre 30% after a time gap of 10 years,” Kumar said, adding, “In oil sector, around 60% officers are stagnated for a period as long as eight years and few hundred are stagnated since last pay revision… And whatever has been approved, majority of the officers will get stagnated within one year.”
The state-run companies cap the quantum of remuneration for employees at each level. Thus, if an employee has reached the highest payable scale at his/her level, he/she would not get any increment until being promoted. The government claimed to have hugely increased the basic pay of public sector companies’ employees, but it actually merged the 68.8% dearness allowances with the basic pay first and then increased the entire amount by 30%, an oil marketing company’s executive said.
Moreover, the government has reduced rate of increment in pay from 4% per annum (and 6% on promotion) to 3% per year each, the executive said. The association says it wants a special dispensation for the oil sector companies to decide on raising the remuneration for its employees, which was discontinued by the government.
Many of the PSU employees are leaving their organisations and are joining private sector firms at salaries as high as between five and ten times more, Kumar said.
Source http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1209395

More news:

New Delhi, Nov. 20: Executives of central public sector units have been given pay hikes of 25 to 45 per cent in the middle of Assembly elections.The raise benefiting over 3.7 lakh executives will be implemented with retrospective effect from January 1, 2007.Heads of central enterprises like SAIL and ONGC will see their basic salary go up from Rs 31,500 to Rs 1.25 lakh a month. The new package also offers employees’ stock options (Esops), variable pay and risk rewards.The implementation will be linked to the performance of each PSU.“This is the best-ever package given by any central government to the executives. The entire exercise was based on the premise that the existing disparity between the salaries in the private sector and the PSUs should be minimised as far as practicable,” said Santosh Mohan Dev, the Union minister for public enterprises.Although the basic salary has gone up by an average 67 per cent, the increase in average gross emoluments ranges between 25 and 45 per cent because of adjustments with existing allowances. The gross pay increase is comparable with the package offered to central government employees earlier this year.The PSU executives’ salary is being revised after a gap of 10 years. The wages of workers are revised by each PSU separately through negotiations with labour organisations.Analysts said compared with blue-chip private sector salaries, the PSU pay was not much to write home about. “The difference in pay scale is higher at the top level, compared to the private sector, than at the lower level,” Sushma Errevelles of Talisman Management Services said.However, given that several private companies are planning to tighten belts to cope with a feared downturn, the “safer” PSU jobs are now considered lucrative enough.Besides, the “perks paid by the two sectors cannot really be compared as many PSU perks are intangible such as security of service. But the money value of perks in the private sector is far higher,” the management consultant said.“The hike will help stop the many crossovers we were witnessing to the private sector. Salaries of CMDs (chairmen and managing directors) were as low as Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 per month, while even consultants in the private sector were getting Rs 1 lakh a day as fee,” said V.S. Jain, a member of the Public Enterprise Selection Board and a former chairman of SAIL.The extra cash that will go into the pockets of PSU executives is expected to spur demand for consumer durables, automobiles and flats in the many townships spread across the country at a time industry is complaining of flagging sales.The PSUs, which had been bracketed in five categories earlier, have now been reclassified into four — A, B, C and non-profit making or D.The heads and directors of B and C firms get salaries equal to that of director, executive directors and general managers of the A list. For the rest, the pay scale will be the same. D-category PSUs will get a minimum salary hike but not a full revision till they are able to post profits.The salary hikes — expected to cost Rs 9,000 crore a year — will be paid by the PSUs but the government underwrites the pay of loss-making units.However, not everyone is happy, and at least one union has revived a strike threat.Oil Sector Officers’ Association president Amit Kumar said: “The effective pay hike is only about 20 to 25 per cent. The government has not considered much of the demands of the profit-making oil companies. We had earlier deferred an indefinite strike. But we plan to go on strike from December 4.”A cabinet meeting, chaired by the Prime Minister, approved the new scales for the 216 operational central PSUs, of which 151 are making profits.psu pay, psu pay revision, pay revision psu, pay revision, cpsu pay revisionhttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1081121/jsp/frontpage/story_10142283.jsp