Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has expressed disappointment over the continued delay in the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) by the National Assembly, even when the bill has scaled through its third reading.
NUPENG’s President, Comrade Igwe Achese, who stated this in a release, said the nation was losing billions of dollars in new investment because of non-passage of the bill.
Passage of the bill into law, he said, has been politicised and there is urgent need to fasten it by the National Assembly in order to fully regulate, sanitise and bring transparency to the sector.
NUPENG equally expressed worry about what it described as epileptic operations in the nation’s four refineries, adding that the state of the refineries was responsible for the massive importation of petroleum products thereby putting pressure on the foreign exchange.
“It is a shame that despite the huge sums of monies voted by successive and present administration for the overhaul of the refineries, their working capacity is still as low as 21 per cent. It is high time total turn-around maintenance were done”, he said.
The group restated its stand against the sale of the assets noting that those in government would sell them cheap to their cronies.
On the welfare of the union members, the president, said, “we are the hardest hit as a result of the current global recession which has been worsened with the drop in oil price.
“The drop in oil price has made the multinationals and contractors to embark on endless redundancies. At our last count, about 3,000 oil workers have lost their jobs because of the oil glut”.
Achese regretted that the union is being made to negotiate redundancies on daily basis and coupled with slave labour in the industry being perpetrated by the multinationals and their service companies engaging NUPENG members as casuals and out sourced staff with no condition of service.
“We will continue to resist it and use all the powers at our disposal to put a halt to the menace”, he said and thanked members for their support.
He equally commended the federal government and NNPC in particular for the reopening of some of the depots, especially Mosimi, and urged them to go further to protect the pipelines and open other depots to ensure adequate fuel supply.