*NNPC LAID OFF ABOUT 200 SUPPORT STAFF IN KRPC AMIDST COVID-19 PANDEMIC*

The Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had on the 31st March, 2020 sacked about 200 support staff without proper consultations.

Just as at the time the support staff were expecting their jobs to be regularised having served the Corporation for several years ranging from 10 to 15 years in the Production and Maintenance Departments of the Refinery with meager salaries, without hazard and medical allowances and made to work under severe and inhumane conditions over the years.

The disengagement came after they were deprived of participating in the just concluded recruitment exercise by the Cooperation such that the criteria were not favorable to most of them and in other to pave way for the newly recruits and the exit door was shown to the vast experienced staff.

Precisely on the 4th and 5th of November 2019, an oral interview and verification exercise was conducted which rekindled the hope of these hard-working staffs that better days are ahead, only to be shocked by the directive from their management that their contract should be terminated with an outrageous and deprived severance package.

The entire support staff of KRPC is calling on the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the NUPENG to come to their aid at this time when the whole world is ravaged with the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that their source of livelihood is protected by the virtue of being financial members of the NUPENG and in the spirit of INJURY TO ONE IS INJURY TO ALL.

We are also calling on the President of the Faderal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFR) and the Honorable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Silva to use their respected offices to prevail over the action of the management of the
NNPC. Also, going by the directive of Mr president that no worker should lose their job at this time of this coronavirus pandemic.

This is the same NNPC who is always on the front line fighting for Nigerians who have been unjustly sacked in some IOCs in the country, does it mean it has been a mere lip service to those Nigerians?

To make matters worse, the deprived severance package paid to the KRPC support staff were far in variance to that paid to their WRPC and PHRC counterparts. It therefore implies that this was not in tandem to what the NNPC management ordered the three SBUs to pay as severance package, and that means the KRPC management underpaid her own support staff same as they have done in salaries payment over the years.

This Nigeria sha. You're working in a dead refinery and you are expecting to be made permanent staff. Since resources have become very scarce, the FG will be forced to use their brain.

The nnpc should pay them off with good money for them to go and start a new life elsewhere at least. Since it's not possible taking them on board. This is not the best time for one to loose his or her job in this lockdown Era we are in. My opinion Sha.