Dangote Petroleum Refinery (DPR) yesterday described the strike call by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) on its members as act of lawlessness and sabotage against the country and its people.
The refinery accused the leadership of the association whipping up sentiments under the pretense of protecting PENGASSAN members to bully them and feed fat on their check-off dues, which it claimed runs into billions of naira.
In a statement by its management, DPR called on relevant authorities to rein in those it called “the oligarchs in PENGASSAN), nothing that “they have proved themselves to be terrorists and have turned the union into a bully organization.”
According to DPR, the call by PENGASSAN in a September 27 memo on its members to withdraw service effective from “00.01hrs Monday (today)”, will inflict unbearable hardship on Nigerians.
The refinery described PENGASSAN’s claimed that it hired 2000 Indians as replacement to the “over 800 presumably sacked Nigerians” as erroneous.
The statement reads: ‘PENGASSAN has not joined issues with us on these factual assertions; rather, it continues to peddle the falsehood that Dangote Refinery has sacked all Nigerians working in the refinery and presumably hired over 2,000 Indians to replace them.
“That is complete falsehood. We also stated in the release that there is an ongoing reorganization with the Dangote Refinery which has resulted in the discharge of a very small number of staff and that the exercise is not arbitrary but is being carried out in the interest of the refinery.
“These facts have not been rebutted by PENGASSAN, neither has its oligarchs attempted to verify the truth. Rather, it continues to peddle the falsehood that we have sacked over 800 members of PENGASSAN for joining PENGASSAN.”
The refinery stated how PENGASSAN and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) frustrated plan by the Federal Government to sell the moribund refineries in Port Harcourt and Kaduna to Dangote Group-led blue star consortium at $750 million in 2007.
Challenging PENGASSAN and NUPENG to pusblish their audited accounts in the past 10 years for public scrutiny, DPR urged the government to call unions’ leadership to order.
“We call on the Federal Government and its agencies, as well as all Nigerian, to stare down PENGASSAN and put a stop to the machinations and blackmail tactics of its oligarch and sponsors”, the refinery said.
