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Senior oil workers return
to work today
By Charles
Okonji
Senior
Business Correspondent
Petroleum and Natural Gas
Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), has faulted the general
strike embarked upon by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and combined
the civil society.
It has therefore ordered its
men to return to work today.
According to it, the strike would
not bring any solution to the increase in the pump prices of petroleum
products.
Deputy President of PENGASSAN,
Mr. Babatunde Oguns, stated that since the Federal Government had
completely withdrawn from financing the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC), the corporation would not continue to subsidise the
products at its own detriment.
He disclosed that the Central
Working Committee (CWC) of PENGASSAN only agreed that the association
would only observe one day strike in support of NLC�s agitation, adding
that PENGASSAN�s members would resume work today.
Oguns said: �The strike
started today (Monday), but for now things are going normally. People in
the field are still working. We believe dialogue alone will resolve the
problem. We have embarked on strike on a number of times, but we never
really achieved anything.�
PENGASSAN�s aversion to this
present strike, according to him, was because of the lack of any positive
result, which previous strikes embarked upon had not
achieved.
He pointed out that the only
solution to the fuel price increase was adequate and reasonable dialogue
with the Federal Government.
The issue that should be
addressed, Oguns maintained, was the rehabilitation of the refineries to
enable them produce at optimal capacity and make the country less
dependent on importation of the petroleum products, stressing that at the
moment the labour union had not exhausted dialogue with the Federal
Government on the deregulation.
The General Secretary of
National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Mr. Elijah
Okougbo, while reacting on the strike, said: �Our members are not working.
Those who have been trapped on platforms and export terminals for one
reason, or the other, are not performing.�
Officials of the major oil
companies in the country, which produce the nation�s 2.5 million barrels
per day for exports said the strike did not have any impact on their
production, as their staff were on the field.
An official of Shell Petroleum
Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) said: �our people who are
working in the offices are mostly not there because of restrictions on
movements, but because the oil production and exports are going ahead.�
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