BY VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG & SEBASTINE OBASI
LAGOS—LABOUR and civil society leaders yesterday in Lagos, called on the National Assembly to step up passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, to save the nation’s oil and gas sector from collapse.

At a one-day interactive enlightenment workshop on Petroleum Industry Bill, which has the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, represented, labour and civil society leaders insisted that PIB was adjudged to be one of the most important legislative bills in the history of the country due to the critical role of the petroleum sector in the Nigeria economy.

Speaking, a vice President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Mr. Issa Aremu, contended that PIB must make provisions that recognised and upheld the interests and welfare of organized labour and workers represented by Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, and Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, respectively.

Aremu said “the Bill must ensure that all companies operating in the Nigerian oil and gas industry comply with all international labour conventions that have been ratified by Nigeria; the collective agreements with the labour unions and the extant labour laws as a minimum in all their dealings with the Nigerian workers and their representatives.

”The Bill must also ensure the mandatory recognition of the right to freedom of association and effective collective bargaining by all companies doing business in the Nigeria oil and gas industry irrespective of where they are located.”

Ensure all workers in the NNPC and ALL other government agencies to be impacted by the PIB shall transit to the new companies/agencies on terms and conditions no less favourable than their present conditions. This is crucial to the successful takeoff of these agencies, the NOC and the PIB itself. Ensure that companies operating in the oil and gas industry do not use the PIB as a ploy to disengage Nigerians. To this end, the PIB should give the regulatory agencies the power to protect the jobs of Nigerians working in the oil and gas industry such that no Nigerian will be relieved of his/her job without the approval in writing of the regulator.