We’ll fight against casualisation of workers with our last blood – NUPENG

The National President of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers, (NUPENG), Mr Williams Akporeha has vowed that they would fight against casualisation and anti-labour practice that has been threatening the survival of the union in the oil and gas sub-sector.

Akporeha stated this during a media roundtable at the weekend in Lagos, where the union intimated journalists on activities mapped out for NUPENG’s forthcoming 40th anniversary which will hold in Abuja on December 5 to 6, with the theme: “NUPENG yesterday, today and tomorrow”.

According to him, the union has made every move possible to ensure that it is not forced into extinction by the management of companies who continue to compound challenges for the union, insisting that NUPENG will continue to move forward.

“The challenges we face as a union are numerous; managements and companies are coming out with various policies to face out NUPENG”.

“Since my emergence, I have embarked on several struggles to ensure that those plans do not come to fruition.

Managements introduce policies to ensure that workers that are supposed to be under NUPENG cadre, are not employed, even if they are employed, they must be under contract labour, and also ensure that they are not unionized;

that is the challenge we are facing, and if as a leader, I don’t up my game and realise the challenges, we might just get to an era where we will not have a body called NUPENG”, he added.

Akporeha, who had been a member of NUPENG since 1992, added that his emergence as the president of the union is not by accident, and he is poised to focus on the core of his administration, while making other requests secondary, including supporting members vying for political offices.

“I am not the president today by mistake, following my antecedents; NUPENG will be coming out with several campaigns in time to come, to say emphatically that NUPENG will continue to stand tall.

Every leadership has priorities and my priority is to ensure the job stability of NUPENG members for now. I want to ensure the existence of NUPENG through memberships of workers. My focus is to fight that and ensure we continue to exist.”

NUPENG is currently focused on tackling the challenges it is currently facing, supporting any members vying for political positions is not our focus at this point, and our focus is to protect the jobs of our members.”