Oil sector trade unions on Monday threatened to go on an indefinite strike from the day government notified a schedule for privatising public sector Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

"All employees and officers of all the public sector oil companies will go on an indefinite strike the day government announces a time-table for privatisation of HPCL and BPCL," Ashok Singh, president of Oil Sector Officers Association, a representative body of all trade unions, told PTI from Ahmedabad.

Singh said the Cabinet Committee on Divestment had on Sunday approved sale of government stake in HPCL to a strategic partner and that in BPCL to public. "(Divestment Minister Arun) Shourie had yesterday (Sunday) stated that his department would now work on the privatisation schedule. The day they announce a time-table we will go on a flash strike."

The oil unions demanded that government stop the privatisation programme in oil sector because of its strategic importance and desist from changing the public sector character of HPCL and BPCL.

Singh said employees and officers would halt all activities in the oil sector, right from oil exploration and production to refining and marketing.

"Divestment policy was for revamping sick and loss-making public sector units. There is no logic in privatising highly profitable companies like HPCL and BPCL, which have been giving government regular dividends without a single penny's budgetary support," he said.

Employees and officers associations in HPCL and BPCL have been holding protests against the government's "ill-conceived" divestment policy and they would go on flash strike the day bids are invited for sale of government shareholding in the two companies, he said.

Singh, who is also the president of Hindustan Petroleum Management-Staff Association, said OSOA is mobilising trade unions in other public sector firms like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India Ltd and GAIL.

Meanwhile, the National United Forum Against Privatisation of Oil PSUs, a representative body of trade unions of HPCL and BPCL and their two subsidiary refineries- Kochi Refineries and Numaligarh Refinery, has supported OSOA's strike call.

A senior functionary of the union charged the government with gross negligence to the strategic importance of the two oil PSUs saying, "Privatisation move is the result of the surrender of the government to the design and pressure of the multinational private oil companies and their agents- the World Bank and the IMF."