Leadership (Abuja)
Our Correspondent
5 May 2008
Residents of Ibeno, near Eket, Akwa Ibom, the community hosting Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN), have decried the effect of the nine-day strike by PENGASSAN on the community.
Striking members of PENGASSAN had shut down the Qua Iboe crude oil export terminal, which processes about 860,000 barrels of crude oil daily for export.
They went on strike to press home their demands for improved conditions of service and the replacement of aged pipelines.
Some members of the community, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the community was pleased with the suspension of the strike by PENGASSAN.
NAN reports that as a result of the strike, the Mobil power plant that supplies electricity to the Ibeno community was last week shut down, throwing the community into darkness for more than one week.
Artisans and frozen fish sellers, who depended on electricity from the company's power plant, complained that there was no income throughout the strike period.
The Rev. Stephen Stephen, a proprietor of a private school in Ibeno, said the strike crippled economic activities in the area while it lasted.
"It affected everybody, there was nothing that moved because this happened at a time salaries of workers had yet to be paid and so parents could not pay school fees," he said.
At the fishing settlement in Ibeno, fishermen said that they were equally affected as their customers did not buy enough fish due to the absence of electricity to power deep freezers.
"We did not find life easy, the people who bought fish from us did not buy enough because there was no light, and this meant low sales from our toil at sea," Lucky Atim, a fisherman said. (NAN)
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