Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria [PENGASSAN] last week raised alarm over what they called an impending massive job loss in the nation’s oil and gas sector.
Already, the minister of labour and productivity, Chief Chukwuemeka Wogu has been alerted on the imminent mass purge.
The alert was raised in a letter dated January 6, 2011 and entitled: ‘Danger looms in the downstream oil sector’ is. It is addressed to the Minister of Labour and Productivity.
In the letter which was signed by General Secretary of the union, Bayo Olowoshile and which was sighted by Shipping Position Weekly the union specifically accused major players in the oil and gas sector of planning to rationalized their employees using various questionable criteria.
Part of the union’s letter to the minster reads: "We have been reliably informed that the marketers in the downstream sector of the oil and gas sector particularly the major players are planning to lay-off staff, under various excuses that would be counter-productive to the economy.
"We are hereby calling on the Federal government through the Honourable Minister of Labour and Productivity and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation through the Managing Director to call a stakeholders forum to discuss the issues that is causing job threat as any precipitated staff redundancy or separation in the sector would be vehemently resisted with dire consequences that will no doubt cause major operational disruption and product scarcity across the nation”, it appealed.
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