Shady recruitment procedures in Sonatrach’s southern-based subsidiary

Algerian Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, has ordered the opening of an in-depth investigation into the activities of a Sonatrach subsidiary based in southern Algeria, namely the National Company for Well Services (“O.N.S.B”) in the wake of reported widespread shady practices by some senior managers of the company concerning notably recruitment procedures of new workers.

Mr Sellal’s move followed a preliminary inquiry carried out by an ad-hoc commission within this company whose managers are said to have waged a systematic double-standard policy regarding the allotment of available job opportunities.

Reliable sources told Echorouk that the General Manager of the targeted company had so far turned a deaf ear to Prime Minister Sellal’s recent injunction to earmark the largest number of available job opportunities for those youth workers settled in the southern provinces of the country.

Mr Sellal ordered that southern-based workers should have priority over those settled in other parts of the country notably those coming from the north in terms of employment in hydrocarbons firms based in the south of Algeria notably in Hassi Messaoud and Hassi R’Mel.

This burning employment issue has of late sparked off sometimes violent street protests by thousands of long-neglected jobless youth in several cities of southern Algeria.

The same sources also revealed that several job seekers hailing from the north-eastern province of Skikda had recently been recruited in shady circumstances thanks to the nepotism and cronyism policy now holding sway within the senior management of the O.N.S.B. Company in blatant defiance of all the regulations in force.