…vow to resist payment system
Federal Government’s plan to register oil workers in the controversial Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System may force employees in the sector to down tools soon.
Already, the oil workers have been threatening to withdraw their service over the government plan, a situation which may result in fuel scarcity across the country
Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, in a letter addressed to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, at the weekend, threatened to embark on a nationwide strike should the Federal Government go ahead with its plan to register their members under the IPPS.
The unions stressed that they were opposed to the plans by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation to register oil workers on the IPPIS platform.
According to the letter dated June 19, 2020, and jointly signed by the General Secretaries of PENGASSAN and NUPENG, Lumumgba Okugbawa and Olawale Afolabi, respectively, the unions said the drawback of the IPPIS platform was its discountenancing of the peculiarities of the oil and gas sector with regards to collective bargaining agreement and approved pay structure between the unions and the Federal Government.
“We reiterate that industrial peace in the sector cannot be guaranteed if the salaries of our members are stopped or if the implementation is carried out unilaterally without our input,” the unions said.
NUPENG warned that members of the unions would down tools if the government did not acquiesce to their requests, but said they had yet to fix a date for the strike to commence.
According to the letter, the unions are surprised that though the Federal Government recently revived the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, where all affected agencies were currently on, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation still insisted on enrolling oil workers on the IPPIS platform.
The unions, therefore, urged the petroleum minister to intervene in the matter to avert crisis in the oil sector.
PENGASSAN and NUPENG said that they were counting on Sylva’s understanding in resolving the matter.