There were strong indications yesterday that oil workers under the umbrellas of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) will today begin a strike action to protest what they perceive as indiscriminate sale of the nation’s refineries by the Federal Government . Also, workers at the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) will cut gas supply to strategic investments, such as gas power plants.
In a telephone interview with THISDAY last night, the NUPENG national president, Mr. Peter Akpatason stated that the strike action has indeed commenced and will continue tomorrow as workers are not happy with the manner the government sold off the refineries. The strike has began and it will continue tomorrow, what the government did was wrong. We are protesting the indiscriminate sale of the refineries,he stated.
The group chairman PENGASSAN,NNPC, Mr. John Elibe had last week directed all workers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its affiliates to come to report to work today clad in red outfits as a way of expressing their anger over this move by the government, as well as the sale of the Stallion House to Zenon Oil.
The strike is aimed at paralyzing the activities in the oil and gas sectors, this is in protest to a breach of agreement by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on the sale of the refineries��, he said.
The Bureau of Public Enterpises (BPE) had last week sold 51 per cent federal government equity in the Port Harcourt Refinery to Bluestar Oil Services Limited Consortium , owned by Aliko Dangote�s Equity Energy Resources, Femi Otedola�s Zenon Oil and Transnational Corporation for a total amount of $561millon.
The sole bidder for Kaduna Refinery, China National Petroleum Corporation failed to match the reserve price after offering $102m.
According to Elibe, �Our unions were not opposed to privatization, we only resented the manner that the BPE sold PH refinery without the necessary due diligence. It was in the same manner it sold out our monumental investment in the Stallion House without our consent.�
�The union and the BPE had signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) part of which was that BPE would finalize the labour issues that are associated with the sale of the refineries and give the unions three weeks to process to their members.
And that the unions would carry out their on due diligence on the prospective buyers,� he said.
�Is it not curious that government is in such a rush to sell these refineries, even when the buyers have not carried out due diligence on them,� he asked.
�Our workers will not allow the new ones access to the refinery unless the fate of the over four thousand workers to go are known and accepted by the unions.