Anisul Islam Noor :
The state-owned BAPEX is now facing severe manpower crisis in both technical and management level. Many of its experienced and skilled hands have joined foreign exploration companies working in Bangladesh. Those companies give higher pay and lucrative benefits.
Some 150 skilled people left the company in the last one decade since their salaries were not equal to what a foreign company pays, sources said.
The vacant positions thus created could not be filled-in through fresh recruitment due to lack of hands having equivalent skills. Manpower demand for ongoing and future planned activities of BAPEX cannot be met even if the existing manpower works round the clock.
The latest approved organogram of November 2011 consisting total 1753 people [634 officers and 1119 staff) was prepared keeping in mind the BAPEX’s ongoing and upcoming exploration & exploitation activities.
Manpower for Geophysical Division has been organized considering one 2D and one 3D seismic crew in operation along with necessary data processing and interpretation services. During field operation, required number of casual workers needed to be hired on daily basis. For any addition of new seismic crew, additional manpower may be recruited temporarily through out- sourcing. Engineers working with the exploration sector have no special salary structure. BAPEX’s salary-structure is poor compared with the international companies who are paying 25 to 40 times higher then BAPEX. So experts in the field do not feel any interest to work with the BAPEX. To attract experts the government should make adequate salary structure, said a BAPEX engineer. About 80 percent of exploration activities are being done by International Oil Companies (IOC), but experts say the government should give importance to the state-owned BAPEX. Prof Anu Muhammad, a noted economist said, the government should strengthen public companies for sustainable development since foreign companies think eye only profit. Prof Anu raises some questions. Why cannot the government train BAPEX’s manpower to supervise and manage all drilling activities? Why does it make risky investments? Leading IOCs like Shell and Chevron do not drill themselves. They employ subcontractors to operate the drilling activities.
The government has to share public money with the foreign companies due to the weakness of BAPEX. If it is made strong technically with skilled-man power it could operate on-shore and shallow block exploration at sea.
The IOC thus exploit us, he said. Bangladeshi companies exhibited a higher success rate in exploration compared with the IOC’s. BAPEX’s cost of discovery is relatively lower, officials claimed.
In the last six years from 2009, procurement of three new Modern Drilling Rigs made BAPEX fully equipped to implement exploration work utilizing the support of total six available rigs. But these facilities could not be properly utilized for lack of adequate and skilled manpower.
There is an allegation that some government officials do not want to strengthen BAPEX, they influence the government to allocate gas blocks to the IOC companies in exchange of bribe.
In January 2014, BAPEX decided to recruit 75 officers of different categories for the existing vacant positions in the post of Assistant Managers and Assistant Officers. BAPEX officials told earlier that the process takes too much time from advertisement to recruitment and final selection. So far BAPEX has discovered eight gas fields since November, 2000. It is operating as an Exploration and Production Company and owns the Shahbazpur, Saldanadi, Fenchuganj, Kamta, Srikail, Semutang, Begumganj and Feni gas fields, said BAPEX sources. During the fiscal year 2013-14, BAPEX produced a total of 1,135.851 mmcm of gas.
