BY JOE Favour /UGHELLI
Oil exploration activities in Oil Mining Lease, OML 30, is set to be shut down by
pipeline surveillance workers engaged by Mormar Marines Ltd, over owed backlog of salaries by the company and the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, NPDC.
The protesting workers, were armed placards, with inscriptions such as, ‘NPDC leave Mormar Marines to do their work, “Mormar Marines and NPDC, pay our salaries, ‘Our salaries are paramount”, ‘President Buhari, call NPDC to order’, ‘ among others, the protesters said they could not continue to go in hunger
The protesters who issued seven days ultimatum to the oil company threatened to shut down oil facilities in the oil bloc operated by joint venture partners, NPDC, Heritage and Shoreline, if their salaries are not paid at the expiration of ultimatum.
Addressing newsmen during the protest, Comrade Tennyson Oriunu a coordinator of Mormar Marines for cluster 7, said: “There is nowhere in this country where a labourer works without going home with their wages at the end of the month but for quite some months now, six good months, we have been working without salaries.
“No reason has been given for that, yet we are still working. We now deemed it fit that maybe the language they want to hear is shutting down or protest. That is why we came in to protest now and this protest is peaceful because we have just started.”
The Coordinator of Cluster 2, in Erhiemu oil field, Comrade Lucky Ofuomukoro said: “We are not happy at all. We are just getting information that the contract has been terminated.
“We are giving them right now seven days ultimatum to pay us and if they don’t pay us, we will shut down this manifold. We will lock all the wellheads, we are the ones protecting them, we will shut them down.
“If they don’t renew this contract before seven days and they don’t pay us from now till evening we are going to shut down the place in seven days time, we will shut down all the wellheads. The truth is that we have been helping this company for some months now, one year plus now, everywhere is peaceful.”
Other Coordinators that spoke in same vein, Chief Efe Olunata and Comrade Paul Agbama urged the Federal Government to order NPDC to sign their own aspect of the payment and ensure the payment of their salaries and renewal of the contract.
They condemn that an alleged attempt to terminate the surveillance contract.
