By Festus Fifen.

Labour Unions in Nigeria affiliated to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria ( PENGANSSAN) on Tuesday shut down offices of Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission ( NUPRC) in Abuja, over poor workers’ welfare.

A group of aggrieved workers led by the Unions branch leaders, were seen protesting at about 7:30 in their large numbers, barricaded the offices located at Jabi District of the nation’s capital, and preventing easy access to the premises.

They displayed placards bearing these messages: “We cannot be working with our monies and not get refund”; “You have deducted our pensions and refused to remit to the PFA”; Pay support staff 7 months salaries”; and Stop selling our future” amongst others.

While they drummed , singing and  dancing around, they vowed that business activities will remain grounded until Management meet all their demands.

The Chairman of PENGANSSAN, NUPRC branch, Engr.  Okey Anya said the protest and picketing will remain peaceful, but insisted that the angry workers will never be intimidated by anyone, noting that workers of NUPRC have been subjected to too many  anti labour practices by their management for a very long time.

According to him, workers have lost their confidence and self esteem, needed for productivity, due to inhumane treatment, and poor working environment.

Anya said, ” We are doing a peaceful protest against our welfare that has been neglected for so long. We have a situation where pension deduction are done and not remitted to the PMAs. We have a situation where our staff who have accessed our cooperative and have had deductions made, but Management has refused to remit them.

” We have a situation where our offices in Port Harcourt did not have light for over a month, we are talking about DPR that was a standard in the industry.  All these situations are anti Labour practices, and we say no to them. We cannot be giving our best in the industry, making sure that the country remains afloat and we are neglected”.

Also Speaking, Dr. Mohammed Malah, PENGANSSAN, NUPRC Branch, disclosed that the aggrieved workers have been engaging the management, but have not gotten any positive response.

Malah said, ” We have been engaging our management on these issues for so long , from May last year and we have all our meetings documented.  It came to a point where they don’t the meeting seriously. We have been attending Joint Consultative meetings every quarter and we tell them what our members are complaining about, but they have refused to listen.

” People are buying ink for their printers, even papers to do the work of the Commission and we said no to that. We have been giving them notices since last year. We have told them that if by the end of July these concerns are not addressed, we will do what we know how to do.

” This picketing will last until our demands are met. We want the poor conditions of work and welfare of staff we have listed to be addressed. We want all our allowances and claims to be paid”.