The Dangote Group is ready to redeploy refinery engineers, who were sacked for joining the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, to the company’s sugar and cement plants, Sunday PUNCH has learnt.
The company will also recruit new engineers to replace the redeployed ones.
Sources in the refinery, who did not want to be mentioned because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the redeployment was a huge loss to the company.
It was gathered that some of the 800 could also be deployed to units within the group’s operations outside the country.
PENGASSAN shut down oil and gas facilities between Sunday and Tuesday over allegations that 800 refinery workers were fired for volunteering to be members of the union.
But the Dangote refinery said it only sacked a few workers who were sabotaging the facility.
Oil and gas workers went on strike in defence of their colleagues, causing the nation losses in oil and gas production as well as a drop in power generation.
The intervention of the Federal Government restored peace as the Dangote Group was asked to redeploy the sacked workers.
Speaking with one of our correspondents, an official said Dangote had no issue with the workers’ decision to join a union, but the act of sabotage could not be tolerated.
The workers were accused of releasing sensitive information to those perceived as the enemies of the refinery.
Sunday PUNCH gathered that some of the affected engineers were among those trained outside the country to build the refinery.
“The workers will be redeployed to sugar, cement and other business units. Some of us are pained because of some of those affected. They are prospects, and the company had good plans for them.
“Has anyone looked at the loss to the company? The majority of these guys were fresh graduates employed by the company, sent abroad for training and then absorbed into the system. These are probably the first set of Nigerian engineers who had been part of the commissioning of a refinery. How many engineers from this part can boast of being part of the commissioning of a big project like this? They were part of it from the beginning. You can’t buy that in the market. You can’t compare the experience of someone who was part of commissioning with someone who was employed after the project.
“How many generations of engineers in Nigeria have that opportunity? Employing new hands requires training them because most Nigerian graduates lack work experience. Can you quantify that investment? It’s a lot, but you can’t risk saboteurs in the system. Then the time before they become grounded? And a refinery gives room for minimal error; otherwise, your investment is gone,” a source stated.
