The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) on Thursday appealed to the Federal Government to include labour unions in its plans to bring in private investors in the management of the country’s refineries.
Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, the South-West Chairman of the union, made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
According to Korodo, joint partnership with private investors in the management of the country’s refineries is a welcome development because it will boost the production capacity.
“The government is thinking of bringing investors to take over the operation of the refineries; nobody is opposing this.
“But government should not rule out the labour aspect of its operation.
“Unions need to be engaged; they need to have discussion with investors.
” This will make them to know how we operate here so that their coming will not affect the workers and where it affects them, they will look for solution.
“We should not be put in the darkness because if we are asked to go at the end of the day we will resist it,” he said.
The chairman said things had not been rosy for stakeholders in the oil and gas sector in the outgoing year.
“The agitation of the militants in the Niger Delta had crippled a lot of activities in the sector.
“Our crude oil production has dropped drastically; even the refineries are not working optimally because there is no way they can push crude oil to the refineries.
” Government is finding ways to engage the militants; my prayer is that this engagement should be a fruitful one so that the crisis will end and the production would come down to normalcy.
“This will further help the country to come out of the economy recession we find ourselves,” he said.
NAN reportthat the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, on Tuesday, said he was in favour of private sector investment and subsequent joint ownership and management of the plants for greater efficiency.
Kachikwu said this when he received members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), who were on an oversight visit to the ministry. (NAN)
