Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) is without a permanent MD for the most part under the present government. The recruitment process has been completed twice but shelved at the last minute.
The organization is being run on acting charge basis while this position has literally become a revolving chair, the company sources said, adding that this has left to lack of effective management controls owing to continuous external intervention which is badly affecting the performance of this leading public sector utility.
The documents show that again the process of appointment of MD has been recklessly stopped wherein Amer Tufail Acting MD, Sohail Gulzar DMD SNGPL and Ali Javed Hamdani, former Siemens top executive have been rejected. The recruitment process is repeatedly being shelved.
Only the board of directors (BoD) of SNGPL can carry out any disciplinary proceedings while MD and DMD are exclusively appointed by the BoD. The BoD in its meeting of April 11, 2020 had decided that there was no evidence against MD or DMD and hence the matter cannot be investigated further. The BoD had decided that the scope of inquiry has to be kept restricted to the observations raised by the PM Office only which were raised while again rejecting the summary of appointment almost 3 months ago. These PM observations were communicated to SNGPL through Petroleum Division on March 19, 2020. The BoD did make a fact finding committee to prepare a report on the allegations which specifically comprised of three members namely Ayub Chaudhry AS Petroleum, Ahmad Aqeel and Manzur Ahmed. The ToRs of the fact finding committee was to look into material available with the ministry regarding lowdown of MD and DMD.
It is highlighted that the fact finding committee has not issued any charge-sheet against Amer Tufail or Sohail Gulzar DMD of SNGPL. Instead, a letter was issued by one of the Directors Sajid Qazi requiring certain information about previous inquiries and or data as old as 10 years having no direct reference to the matter raised by the PM Secretariat.
This letter was sent on a much belated date of April 17, 2020 which was received on April 20 at SNGPL offices. This can be construed as an attempt to come up with revised set of charges to fill the vacuum since no documentary evidence of any of the charges earlier leveled are available. It can be easily inferred that no wrongdoing took place in the first instance. This is also an attempt to marginalize the independent operation of the board and is against the letter and spirit of corporate governance rules.
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