Fuel scarcity looms as NUPENG issues strike notice

Nigerians might again experience long queues at filling stations after the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) on Monday issued a 14-day nationwide strike notice.

The Union accused Chevron Nigeria Limited, Nigeria Agip Oil Company, and National Petroleum Development Company among others, of unfair Labour practices including indiscriminate sack of members without payment of their benefits.

NUPENG lamented that some of the issues had been pending since 2012 despite interventions by the Federal Government through the Ministry of Labour and Employment in the Union’s favour.

In a statement in Lagos, the President and General Secretary of the union, Prince Williams Akporeha and Olawale Afolabi, threatened to shut fuel distributions across the country among other measures, if its grievances were not addressed.

The statement reads in part “we write to convey to the general public and all relevant government agencies the resolution of the Special National Delegates Conference (SNDC) to issue a 14-day notice of a nationwide industrial action if some legitimate welfare and membership related issues that have been variously resolved in our favour even by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment are not adequately and conclusively addressed and resolved within the next fourteen days.

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“This Ultimatum takes effect from Monday 15th, November, 2021.

“Some of these issues include: The outstanding short payment of terminal benefits to our members that were declared redundant in 2012 by management of Chevron Nigeria limited. For the records, these benefits were in line with the subsisting Collective Bargaining Agreement, CBA, as at the time these workers were laid off. This fact has been severally established but Chevron management short paid these workers and locked them out of its premises.

“Nigeria Agip Oil Company and its contractors are also owing contracts to workers’ salaries and allowances for upwards of 10 months. These workers are being denied salaries and allowances on very inhuman excuses that the contractors are yet to fulfill certain due process.

“Yet this due process is not stopping NAOC from exploiting the skills and sweat of these Nigerians for profits while the workers and their families are wallowing in hardship and poverty.

“In similar manner, NAOC has since early 2020 been using the excuse of COVID -19 to keep several of our members away from work while using casual/daily paid workers to do their work even while there is a subsisting contract.”