Posted by By Emma Arubi on
ALL Conoil filling stations in the Warri and its environs in Delta state were sealed up, yesterday, by members of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) over alleged non-implementation of the agreements reached between the unions and the management on some anti-labour/union activities.
WARRI - ALL Conoil filling stations in the Warri and its environs in Delta state were sealed up, yesterday, by members of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) over alleged non-implementation of the agreements reached between the unions and the management on some anti-labour/union activities.
Two offices of Conoil and its depot at the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) premises were locked by the unionists who arrived the stations as early as 7.00 am with placards, some of which bore the inscriptions: "Conoil/Belbop workers, no to oppression, intimidation and victimization", "Conoil/Belbop respect the Abuja agreement", "Conoil/Belbop, we are tired of standby" among others.
Zonal chairman of NUPENG in Warri, Mr. Akporeha Williams said yesterday that "we have signed nine communiqués, mediated by both the NNPC and Federal Ministry of Labour and none today is being implemented. So our action today (yesterday) is to further protest all those actions."
He insisted that workers of Conoil had the right to belong to a union and that nobody, no matter how highly placed, could take that right away from them. Acting zonal chairman of PENGASSAN, Mr. Ebi Alabrah asserted that "we are picketing Conoil because of the anti-labour practices of Conoil/Belbop management. This action is also taking place in Port Harcourt.
"The anti-labour/union activities that Belbop management has been practicing over the years are so many. The main reason why we have decided to picket this time is because the management of Belbop/Conoil has refused and disobeyed communiqués and agreements reached with the unions over the unionization of our members", he said.
Alabrah stated that sometime in 2001, the management of the company "put on standby our members who joined the unions and all efforts to talk to them even with the intervention of the NNPC and Minister of Labour proved abortive. So if the management of Conoil/Belbop thinks that the best way to treat our members who are unionized is to put them on standby since then, we want to prove to the management that our members in Conoil/Belbop are not alone, that our members have decided to join them in this fight so that they will be assigned work and be sent to locations where colleagues are also working."