Over poor worker welfare, labor unions affiliated with the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGANSSAN) shut down the offices of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) on Tuesday in Abuja.

The aggrieved workers, led by Union branch officials, barricaded the offices in the nation’s capital’s Jabi District as early as 7:30 a.m., preventing easy access to the premises.

While drumming, chanting, and dancing, they vowed that business activity would be halted until Management met all of 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-labor 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.

“We are doing a peaceful protest against our welfare that has been neglected for so long. We have a situation where pension deductions 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 which 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”.

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

His words: ” 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”. (Daily Independent: Text, Excluding Headline)

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