Amnesty Programme implementation crucial to products' supply efficiency — NUPENG

The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has hinged the solution to the lingering fuel scarcity in the country on ...

 the disposition of the Federal Government to pursue the Niger-Delta development agenda and more importantly, the implementation of the Amnesty Programme.
The General Secretary of union, Comrade Elijah Okougbo, during a chat with Business Hallmark last Wednesday in Lagos, explained that it would be foolhardy for anybody, especially the Federal Government, to think that the prevailing uncertainty in the Niger-Delta area and shoddy implementation of the Niger-Delta Amnesty programme would create the needed peace for uninterrupted operations in both the upstream and downstream sector of the petroleum industry.
The labour leader urged the government to do everything possible to guarantee peace in the region by ensuring full implementation of the Amnesty development programme so that the current restiveness in the area occasioned by decades of neglect and which is always triggered by pervasive under-development could be addressed.
According to him, the current practice which does not guarantee timely and regular payments of monthly allowances to deserving youths who signed the Amnesty document and lack of assurances on the physical development of the region in the immediate future constitute major hurdles to collective initiatives being taken to restore peace to the region and improve oil exploration, production and distribution in the country.
“Petroleum scarcity is one of the fallouts of the multi-faceted problems that the country is contending with today. Scarcity is caused by some factors one of which is the Niger-Delta crisis. The President's ailment has also been another hurdle to efficient supply of products as his continued absence has made the implementation of the Amnesty agreement impossible and this seems to be creating another basis for restiveness in the region. Some of the youths who are supposed to be productively engaged if their monthly allowances are paid appear now to be engaging in crimes.
“As at today, we have about 14 reported cases of pipeline vandalisation which have broken the channels for pumping products into the depots or farm tanks across the country. So, our position is that products' supply efficiency can only be guaranteed if the pipelines are fixed and when those who engage in destroying them are attended to by providing them what was promised by government in the Amnesty policy framework”, Okougbo said.
The NUPENG scribe further blamed the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for the current artificial fuel scarcity in the downstream sector, pointing out that if the Corporation had not been engaging in discriminatory supply of products to depots, especially those with installed computerized loading facilities, the impact of the scarcity would have been less on the economy.
He disclosed that the position of the union on the current problems in the petroleum industry sector were ventilated at the meeting held separately with the Minister of State in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources on January 14 this year and the Minister thereafter.
Specifically, NUPENG canvassed re-opening of credit channels by banks to oil and gas companies or by government-induced recapitalization from the Federation Accounts, adequate security for petroleum tanker drivers on the nation's highways and others working in oil facilities and rehabilitation of the major highways and transportation systems, including the railway systems in order to ensure operational efficiency at all sectors of the hydro-carbon industry.