AGIP’s plan to sack workers triggers tension in Delta

The Nigeria Agip Oil Company’s alleged plan to sack 55 workers, without any benefits, by next month, on Friday triggered crisis among its host communities.
The company was said to have even concluded plans to lay them off without paying their accumulated salary arrears.
But the 55 workers, junior staff, have threatened a showdown via labour dispute extant laws, wondering why the oil giant subjected them to “slave wage” having operated for over 50 years in their land.
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.
The 55 workers, who claimed to be under “labour agony”, hail from Ndokwa ethnic nationality of Delta State.
They work at the Kwale, Okpai Gas Reinjection Plant, from where gas is supplied to the multi-billion naira 480 mega watts Independent Power Plant at Okpai in Ndokwa East Local Government Area of the state.
They wondered why indigenous marginal oil field operators in Delta State like Midwestern Oil and Gas, Energia, Pillar and Platform Oil, pay over N100,000 to its junior staff, whereas AGIP, that is paying a paltry N30,000 on monthly, wants to embark on such a dangerous stance.
They said they had been under harsh economic weather, working for the company, when they were between 16 and 20 years of age, and now that they were currently being owed salaries arrears for upwards of five months by the company, they want to be sacked.
Pastor Friday Isicheli, who spoke on behalf of the 55 workers, said since all peaceful and civilized means to iron out things with the company could not work, time and the livelihood of host communities, which depend on the single source contract, had declined.
One of the workers said: “We are being used as slaves without pay by AGIP.
“Now, we have started losing our loved ones and family members.
“Some have lost sanity, marriages have broken up owing 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 was unjustly slashed from N67,000 to N30,000, in this hard economic dispensation, under the disguise of advance payment.”
He recalled how the company retired some managers before their time 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 them to their original status.
The source maintained “We will declare labour dispute, under extant laws of Nigeria, to secure our rights.”
He lamented that some of his colleagues have 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.
He said most of the 55 workers were victims of the 2012 flooding in Ndokwa axis of the state.
He decried the company for not providing any relief materials to them “despite the profit it has garnered during oil exploration and exploitation activities of over 10,000 barrels daily from Okpai, Beneku, Abalagada axis and their surrounding communities.”