The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dizeani Allison-Madueke, and the Director, Department of Petroleum Resources, Austin Olorunshola, on Thursday disagreed on whether the government intends to downsize the workforce in the agency or not.
The disagreement followed queries by the Senate on the amount to be spent on each staff of the agency in this year’s budget, put at N27 million per staff.
Allison-Madueke, in her bid to stave off further queries on the issue by the Senate Committee on the defence of the budget of the department, said that there would be drastic reduction in the personnel cost of the DPR as the government was not just considering the merger of some agencies with similar functions but also the downsizing of the workforce.
The workforce of the DPR, based on the projections in the 2012 Budget, was put at 1,100.
Allison-Madueke said: “This is symptomatic of the entire federal civil service.
“It’s not solely in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
“It goes across the civil service.
“That is why Mr. President has called for a critical rationalisation of the ministries, departments and agencies, with a view to reducing the recurrent expenditure and overheads.”
“The slight increase in DPR’s recurrent budget represents provisions for anticipated recruitment of new staff to improve the overall effectiveness of the department,”
But in a shocking twist, Olorunshola said the DPR is to recruit more staff within the next two weeks.
The DPR wants to spend about N30 billion out of its budget proposal of N35 billion on personnel cost.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), Senator Paulker Emmanuel, said of the development: “I feel so worried as a Nigerian because if our budget is tailored towards that style, then we are not creating hopes for investing in infrastructure and I hope you have noted that.
“I think there’s need for us to have a change and the oil industry is assumed to be a capital intensive industry.”
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