Staff of Niger Delta Westerner/NPDC under the auspices of OML 34 Host Community Workers Forum, on Tuesday, downed tools over alleged nine months’ unpaid salaries, unwarranted hardship and marginalisation by the management of the company.
The workers in their hundreds, as early as 7am on Tuesday, barricaded the entrance to the Flow Station and withheld the daily report of production of the company, to register their grievances.
The protesters carried placards with various inscriptions such as: “We are tired of this marginalization of ND-Western/NPDC to communities workers in OML 34,” “President Buhari, deliver us from modern slavery,” “OML 34 Management, don’t eliminate host communities’ workers,” and “Ogunmola must go.”
Addressing newsmen at the company’s premises during the protest, the Chairman of the Forum, Mr. Uloho Ochuko, berated the management of the oil firm for treating them as second class citizen in their own land.
Uloho recalled with dismay how the company sent them for series of training with promises to make them full staff of the company to replace the retired staff, but to their surprise, four years after the completion of their training, the retirees used their own children and relatives to fill the positions meant for them, turning them to perpetual causal workers after putting in several years of service.
He disclosed further that the workers were denied appointment letters, identity cards, access to medical facility, safety tools and other useful tools for work.
On his part, the secretary of the Forum, Mr. Kingsley Duku, disclosed that several meetings were held in the past with the management of the company to resolve the issue of marginalisation confronting the staff, but added that the management rather than fulfill his promises had been using security operatives to intimidate and arrest them.
“We had written to all relevant authorities on this issue of marginalisation, even the National Assembly, the then Deputy Governor of Delta State, Prof. Amos Utuama, cautioned the management of the company on the implication of their action but all to no avail. Now we will want to take our destiny in our hands.
“We voted for a change, the change must begin with the management of the company, contractors to the company and staff of the company,” Duku said.
While threatening to shut down production activities both at the Ughelli Flow Station and the Utorogu Gas Station indefinitely in the next forty-eight hours, if their plights were not addressed, the Forum called on President Muhammadu Buhari, the Senate Committee on Oil and Gas and the member representing Urhobo ethnic nationality at the red chamber, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, to speedily intervene in the matter to forestall further breach of peace.
