Surveillance workers attached to Mormar Marines Ltd, in Oil Mining Lease, OML 30 have shut down oil exploration over the non payment of backlog of salaries owed them by the company and the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, NPDC.
The workers who shut down equipments of the oil company, on Thursday, disclosed that they were forced to shut down the facilities operated by NPDC, Heritage and Shoreline as they could no longer bear the hardship in Agbarha-Otor, Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta state.
It would be recalled that in January 2023, the workers barricaded the entrance of the Erhiemu oil field in a peaceful to demand for the payment of their backlog salaries.
Armed with placards with various inscriptions such as “You cannot owe us and disengage us” “NPDC, stop this divide and rule”, “We are comfortable working with Mormar Marines” among others, they said NPDC had concluded plans to terminate their jobs without any arrangement to pay them the six months outstanding salaries still being owed them.
Addressing newsmen at the Pigging Manifold, a Mormar Marines Ltd, Coordinator in the company, Comrade Lucky Ofuomukoro said, “We have been on protest at the manifold since Wednesday last week to register our grievance with no positive response from NPDC.
He said: “In December last year, the management of Mormar Marines Ltd, called us for a meeting where they told us that the job has been terminated and we said if they no longer need our services, we have to quit. We now did a protest in this particular place and told them to pay the salary they were owing us so that we can go to our houses.
“At the end of the day, the management of the company called us for a meeting where we told them to extend the job and they told us to go back to our duties which we did.
“At the end of March, they promised that there will be order to extend the work, but to our greatest surprise, they called us to say that the work has ended. We came back here since last week telling them to pay our salaries, but till this moment, nobody from NPDC, Heritage and Shoreline has come; they just left us like that.
“We don’t have power to damage the facilities, the only power we have is to shut them down and that is what we have done”.
Another Coordinator, Mr. Paul Agbama lamented the marginalization and oppression meted on the surveillance workers said, “We have been on this job for many years but recently, our salaries are not coming regularly which is not fair.
“We have decided to shut down so that they will call us and pay our salaries.”
