Queues of motorists at petrol filling
stations may resurface at the weekend if the ongoing strike by the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation branches of the Nigerian Union
of Petroleum and Natural
Gas Workers and the Petroleum and Natural Gas
Senior Staff Association of Nigeria is not called off.
The strike, which commenced on Monday,
was as a result of the withdrawal of the operating licence of the
NNPC/Department of Petroleum Resources’ closed pension scheme.
A source in the industry, who did not
want to be quoted, said if things were not resolved, queues might
reappear at filling stations nationwide by the weekend.
The Lagos Zonal Chairman, NUPENG, Alhaji
Tokunbo Korodo, told our correspondent on the telephone that the
products at most filling stations were from private tank farms, except
for reserves from some NNPC partially or fully-run tank farms.
He said tank farms with any form of
collaboration with the NNPC were also not loading, but added that
meetings were still ongoing with the NNPC management to resolve the
problem.
According to Korodo, if the talks fail,
the unions may call for solidarity support from all union members in the
industry, which will result in a total shutdown of industry operations.
“We want to make this clear. It is not
Nigerians that are the problems. We don’t want to unnecessarily punish
Nigerians. The point is that if the NNPC continues to neglect our
demands, we will then call for the solidarity support and ground all
operations.”
Also speaking, the Chairman, DPR branch
of PENGASSAN, Mr. Amba Ndoma-Egba, said there was no going back on the
strike, adding, “All NNPC/DPR facilities nationwide have been shut,
including the offices.”
He also said, “This action will continue
until all our demands are met. This action by these unions will soon
cause fuel scarcity as the DPR is in charge of clearing of vessels that
bring imported petroleum products into the country.
“We also gathered that the NNPC unions
have also asked their members in all the refineries and the PPMC depots
nationwide to down tools, which has also compounded the problem.”
He said all PENGASSAN and NUPENG staff members had been withdrawn from the terminals, depots and jetties nationwide.
Ndoma-Egba lamented paying lip service by
the government to the issues affecting the DPR in spite of the
strategic place it occupied in revenue generation in the country.
The spokesperson of the DPR branch of
PENGASSAN, Mr. Michael Kambi, confirmed on Wednesday that the strike
would continue until the licence was restored as the workers could not
afford to go to the open pension scheme, where pension funds had been
growing wings.
