By Jimitota Onoyume

PORT HARCOURT: An indigenous oil firm, Belema Producing Limited, has called for oil bearing communities to be treated as key stakeholders in the industry, stressing that  this will help achieve enduring peace in the region.

President of the firm, Mr Jackrich Tein,  who spoke at the inaugural meeting of Board of Directors of the company, said as  a policy  they will continue to sustain a robust relationship with  host communities, adding that  they had concluded arrangement to productively engage more persons from the communities in the operations of the firm.

According to him, when companies employ youths in the areas of operations  it  will help in the fight against oil theft and related challenges in the sector.

He further enjoined people in the region to shun attack on oil assets, saying they should explore the gains in dialogue to resolve differences.

His words, “Today, we have our first board of Directors meeting, I have handed over  the company’s chairmanship position to Mr. Nedo Osayande and I’ m now the President of the company.

“The only way to sustainable cohesion and peace is to involve host communities in the frontiers of ventures of this nature.  We are   involving them by creating a huge employment opportunity for them. Give them relevant contracts, even if they don’t have the capacity but you teach them  how to form partnership and then they can showcase that ability to pursue their goal.

“Involving them is also to increase production, since we took over production has been going high. We took over at 1,400 barrels a day but now we produce more than that a day these is because there has been a lot of cohesion within the local communities.”

He also announced a former senior staff, Mr Boma Brown, as the new Managing Director of the firm, Adebayo Babalola, Vice President and Mr Fonseca Avworo as Vice President/ Secretary of the firm.