Workers of Mormar Marines Limited, a pipeline surveillance firm in the Oil Mining Lease 3O, on Thursday shut down oil installations in the facility over alleged non-payment of six months salaries owed by the company.
The shutdown reportedly caused disruptions to operations and oil activities of the NPDC at the Erhiemu Pigging Manifold in the Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State.
By 8am on Thursday, the aggrieved workers had converged at the oil well’s flow station, carrying placards bearing different inscriptions such as “You cannot owe us and disengage us”; “NPDC, stop this divide and rule”; and “we are comfortable working with Mormar Marines”,
While alleging that NPDC had concluded plans to terminate their jobs by revoking the contract from their contracting firm, Momar Marines Limited, the protesters accused NPDC of failing to make adequate arrangements to pay the six months outstanding salaries owed the workers before attempting to lay them off.
Addressing journalists during the protest at the Pigging Manifold of OML 30 operated by the joint venture partners, NPDC, Heritage and Shoreline, a Coordinator at Mormar Marines, Lucky Ofomukoro, said the aggrieved workers had begun protests at the manifold since last Wednesday last.
“It is so annoying that till the moment, no positive response has been given by NPDC,” he said.
He further explained, “At the end of March, they promised to extend the work, but to our greatest surprise, they called to inform us that the appointment has been terminated. We came back here since last week telling them to pay our salaries, but up till this moment, nobody from NPDC, Heritage or Shoreline has come. They just left us to our fate. We do not have power to damage the facilities, the only power we have is to shut down the facilities and that is what we have done”.
Also speaking to journalists, another Coordinator, Mr. Paul Agbama, lamented what he called “the marginalisation and oppression meted on the surveillance workers”.
Representatives of the oil firms’ joint venture partners, NPDC, Heritage and Shoreline, could not be reached for comments on the incident as of the time of filing this report.
