The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association on Monday said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had laid off 850 contract workers at the refineries.
The aggrieved unions related this in a joint press release signed by the National President, NUPENG, Williams Akporeha, and his counterpart in PENGASSAN, Mr Ndukaku Ohaeri, including their general secretaries.
The statement was tagged ‘NUPENG and PENGASSAN strongly react to comments by Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, on refineries and oil and gas workers’.
“On the purported threat of the Group Managing Director of NNPC to sack workers, we wish to state here that it was actually no more a threat but that it had already been carried out with the sack of 850 support staff in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, throwing almost a thousand workers into hard financial situation without an iota of empathy or consultation with the union,” it said.
The associations revealed that they made attempt to embark on industrial action, but only craved amicable dialogue on the commensurate terminal benefits of the workers who have been in service for 10 to 15 years.
The statement read, “We found it rather highly inhuman and unfair on the part of NNPC management to sack these workers with only their last paycheques after 15 good years of their lives in NNPC.
“If a Minister of Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Group Managing Director of NNPC can dismiss contract workers that have served for more than 10 years continuously as if they are rodents, what more can we expect from lOCs. The monthly salaries of 25 of these contract staff put together cannot equal a typical management staff salary of the same organisation.”
