Aggrieved oil workers shut AGIP’s gas plant in Delta

Irked by the harsh condition of service they were subjected to, 55 aggrieved workers of the Nigeria Agip Oil Company on Tuesday unleashed terror on the Kwale/Okpai, Delta State gas plant of the oil giant.
The Gas Re-injection Plant supplies gas to the multi-billion naira 480 mega watts Independent Power Plant at Okpai in Ndokwa East Local Government Area of Delta State.
The workers had last week threatened a showdown should the company fail to renege on its plan to sack them without any benefits and proper payment of their accumulated salary arrears.
The 55 workers, all junior staff, vowed to invoke labour dispute extant laws, wondering why they were subjected to “slave wage”.
The protesters, who are indigenes of the hist community and of Ndokwa ethnic nationality, claimed that they have been under “labour agony” of the company for over 50 years that it had operated in their land.
According to them, if indigenous marginal oil field operators in Delta State such as Midwestern Oil and Gas, Energia, Pillar and Platform Oil, could pay over N100,000 to its junior staff, AGIP should do the same.
While they flayed the company’s paltry pay of N30,000 monthly to them, they lamented that for decades, they had been under the harsh economic weather, working for the company and now that they were currently being owed salaries arrears for upwards of five months, the company wanted to sack them without pay.
The worker’s spokesperson, Pastor Friday Isicheli, wondered why all civilised means to resolve the festering crisis with the management of the company failed.
Isicheli said: “Over the years, we have made several peaceful moves to iron out things with the company but to no avail.
“Their stance had led to geometric decline in time and livelihood of host communities, which depend on the single source contract.
“We are being used as slaves without pay by AGIP.
“We have started losing our loved ones and family members.
“Some have lost sanity, marriages have broken up owing to non-payment of salaries by the company because we could not educate our children and give them proper medical attention.
“It is now a year and seven months that our salaries were unjustly slashed from N67,000 to N30,000 in this hard economic dispensation, under the disguise of advance payment.”
Isicheli recalled how the company retired some managers before their terminal date and paid them off with N150 million gratuity, appealing to the company, in the interest of peace, to pay up their salary arrears and bonuses, including Christmas and leave allowances, as well as return to them to their original status.
He said: “We will declare labour dispute, under extant laws of Nigeria to secure our rights.”
He lamented that some of his colleagues had been thrown out of their rented apartments because of the ill-treatment being meted out on them by the company and wondered why the company deceived them in 2003 into what he described as ‘slave contract’ when it demanded “a reversal of our former work status as Labour Staff”.
Isicheli decried the lassie-faire attitude of the company to its workers who lost their lives and property during the 2012 flooding saga.
He said this was disheartening “despite the profit it has garnered during oil exploration and exploitation activities 10,000 barrels daily from Okpai, Beneku, Abalagada axis and their surrounding communities.”
AGIP is one of the major operators in the Niger Delta region since oil was discovered in Nigeria over 50 years ago.
The company operates mainly within Oil Mining Licence, spread through Delta, Imo and Rivers States.