 |
Minister
of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, meet with the leadership of
PENGASSAN and NUPENG in Abuja yesterday
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The Federal Government
yesterday reached an agreement with some major oil marketers to recall sacked
workers as requested by the sector’s labour unions.
Daily
Trust report continues:
The
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, at the reconvened
meeting with Petroleum Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and
representatives of some oil companies, warned indigenous and international oil
companies that Nigeria would not tolerate indiscriminate sack of workers,
notwithstanding the economic situation.
He
said one of the cardinal objectives of the present administration is to create
jobs.
It
would be recalled that the Management of Universal Energy Ltd was alleged to
have sacked 20 of the 22 NUPENG members in the company in preference to
contract workers. The unions also accused another company, FUGRO Nig. Ltd, of
sacking its members and coercing them to sign severance letters and
unilaterally terminating 25 members of staff out of which six are executive
members of PENGASSAN and NUPENG. It also claimed that Halliburton threatened to
reduce its workforce.
The
minister said: “After a long deliberation, we resolved all the contentious
issues. FUGRO has to revert to status quo and open up discussions on the
redundancy situation with the union. They have two weeks to report back to the
ministry.
“Universal
Energy also has to revert to status quo meaning that the retrenched staff
members have to return to work. They are expected to open up a fresh redundancy
talks to be monitored by the South-south zone of the Ministry of Labour in Uyo
and give us a feedback within two weeks.
The Minister commended PENGASSAN for its cooperation towards finding a permanent solution to the disputes in the sector.
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