Over 1000 workers of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will leave service any moment from now, Daily Trust has learnt.
More than 200 of them are middle level officers that are caught up in the ongoing restructuring that has seen the exit of top management staff and nine heads of the corporation’s subsidiaries.
About 800 others are those that will attain the mandatory retirement age of 60 years or 35 years in service in the next one and a half years.
The new NNPC boss, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu has said all staff retiring by 31st December 2016 should go now as a result of the downsizing, a source said.
The source said those to be affected are from the subsidiaries, especially pioneer workers of the refineries.
As at January this year, the Corporation has about 9,500 workers in its services.
The New Group Managing Director announced the disengagement of 38 management staff last week and said the on-going retirement of the Corporation workers will go down to the lower cadre.
‘It’s A to zero restructuring. I’ve done the first three layers which is going from the Group Executive Directors to Group General Managers and General Managers. You’re going to have a lot more now. The NNPC isn’t public service. It’s a corporation and we run like a company generating money for the people of Nigeria. So, the whole concept of anything goes should stop,” he had said.
Already there is agitation from the staff due to the on-going reforms alleging that it was not following due process.
They cited the example of recruitment of about 12 top management staff into corporation and deploying them in key positions without any employment notice or consultations of relevant stakeholders.
They also accused the new management of punishing some staff that insisted on due process.
Last Friday the two unions in the oil industry, the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (NUPENG and PENGASSAN) warned that the reforms are exposing their members to danger.
“The on-going exercise portends a great danger in the Oil and Gas Sector, if workers are meant to bear the brunt of Government current action where the fight on corruption is now used as an act of vindictiveness against workers.”
Meanwhile, the management has scheduled a meeting with the oil unions tomorrow as part of the efforts to carry them along.
The Management further said the reforms were free from ethnicity or any agenda but mainly to enshrine professionalism in the system in a statement issued recently.
