Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has called on President Bola Tinubu to sack the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Mr Gbenga Komolafe.
According to the National Industrial Relation Officer of PENGASSAN, Mr Ifeanyi Eze, the NUPRC helmsman is accused of “deliberately refusing to open channels of communication to address concerns about manifest mismanagement of the commission and poor employees’ welfare in the two years of his stewardship”.
The commission’s workers have started picketing and barricading offices of the commission nationwide to demand the immediate sack of the CEO.
They called on President Tinubu to sack Mr Komolafe or order him to resign to pave the way for an urgent forensic audit of all contract processes and payments by the commission under his watch.
According to Mr Eze, the workers’ grievances include non-payment of pension deductions, cooperative deductions, medical retainerships, nonpayment of cleaners and drivers for over seven months, insufficient work tools, staff medical outstanding payments, non-payment of outsourced personnel and others.
The group said urgent steps must be taken to address the issues affecting NUPRC staff.
He said: “In the NUPRC office in Port Harcourt, they do not have electricity for the past two months. Then, in the NUPRC Lagos office, there is no water supply, and in the Abuja office, the lifts are not working.
“Beyond these, other things have been happening like non-refund of medical bills agreed in workers’ collective bargain agreements. Pensions are deducted and not remitted, so there are myriads of inefficiency and deficiencies going on.
“You know NUPRC, which was formerly DPR, is a regulator in the oil and gas industry. If the commission, who is the regulator cannot fix itself, then what will happen to the companies they are regulating?
“So, we are saying that there are a lot of people in this country that can adequately do the job; Komolafe should not be there. That is our stand. That is the stand of the branch, the zone and the national (bodies of PENGASSAN)”.
