Bill criminalising casualisation strategic for oil and gas industry— NUPENG
As the Bill seeking to amend the Labour Act to criminalise casualisation of workers in Nigeria at the National Assembly enters its crucial stage, major stakeholders’ who are likely to gain more from the law when assented have started called for more speed by the lawmakers.
Leading the pack is the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), who has called for speedy passage of a Bill to stabilise the real value of human local content in the industry.
The group in a statement signed by National President of NUPENG, Williams Akporeha and Secretary General, Afolabi Olawale, urged that the Bill meets presidential assent before the end of second quarter of 2020.
They hailed the House of Representatives for initiating the Bill, stressing that it is a new dawn in the industrial relations practice in Nigeria, whereby workers’ confidence could be restored and their best delivered on a staff-satisfaction mentality at work.
NUPENG argued further that on takeoff of the new law, workers would no longer suffer indecent workplace treatment, job insecurity and other forms of precarious work conditions that often expose them to health risks, exploitation and depression among others.
The trade union noted that casualisation of workers has regrettably accentuated the increasing levels of crimes and social dislocations Nigeria is currently experiencing.
Continuing, NUPENG stressed that casualisation has particularly caused the union and its members lot of pains, setbacks, anguish and agonies for decades. They maintained that some exploitative and manipulative multinational companies and their local collaborators in the oil and gas industry have over the years being exploiting gaps in the country’s labour laws to flippantly treat Nigerian oil and gas workers with disdain and indecent working conditions.
