Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, has rejected the reported plans by the Federal Government to scrap the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, Petroleum Products, Pricing and Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, and other agencies in the oil and gas industry, saying it is unacceptable. NUPENG in a statement by its President, Igwe Achese claimed it was another attempt by the Government to reduce the workforce in the sector and vowed that moves would be resisted by labour.
According to the statement, “the current back door policy to retrench workers in the Federal Government Corporations will not augur well for the industrial peace and harmony in the oil and gas sector under the guise of a National oil policy. ”What is necessary now is to strengthen the companies by granting them autonomy and not to be controlled by red-tapism in Government.
Scrapping these bodies and putting them under one umbrella to be known as Petroleum Regulatory Commission, PRC, will be too cumbersome and make the Petroleum Minister too powerful. We call on the Federal Government to put pressure on the National Assembly to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, which will make the oil and gas industry much more efficient, transparent and accountable and in the long run bring the needed investments in the sector.
”We want to warn that it will not tolerate what the Federal Government is presently doing in aviation agencies like NAMA, FAAN, NIMET, where workers are been sacked in the name restructuring. “The National Assembly should not to allow the scrapping of NNPC, DPR, and PPPRA as they were set up by law and cannot be scrapped overnight by Government fiat. We want to state again that the workers Union in the sector will resist the plan with all its powers and might.”
(Vanguard )
