The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has called on the Federal Government to pay all debts owed oil marketers to avert job losses and promote the growth of the oil and gas industry.

PENGASSAN made the call in reaction to the threat by the marketers to embark on the retrenchment of their employees if the government refused to settle the over N720 billion subsidy arrears.

“The debts, according to the marketers, was the outstanding subsidy owed on the importation of petroleum products, accrued interest on loans from banks and exchange rate differential, which made them to halt importation of refined petroleum products leaving only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) doing the business,” PENGASSAN said in a statement by its National Public Relations Officer, Fortune Obi.

According to it, if the government is genuinely interested in the growth of the downstream sector and wants to attract more investments in the sector, then it should pay the debts owed the marketers.

In order to make the payments, the association expects the Federal Governor to verify the
authenticity of the claims by the oil marketers.

“The government should try to separate the genuine claims by the importers from spurious one and pay them because we will not like to be engulfed in the mistakes of the past where briefcase marketers milked the nation through dubious subsidy claims,” it said.

“A situation where the workers in the industry bear the inability of the government to honour its obligations as part of the importation deal will be unfair and unacceptable to our Association. This is against the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s major policy of job creation.”

The union added that although it would support moves by the government to “to end subsidy regime and spurious claims by the marketers” it was worried about the impact the non-payment of the payment would have on the industry.
For instance, it said in the last five years, the workforce in the downstream sector, especially the marketing subsector had been depleted by over 70 percent.

“Most of them were thrown to the already over-bloated labour market.”