Victor Ahiuma-Young
9 November 2009
The proposed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), has continued to receive knocks from stakeholders and other concerned individuals and groups with workers in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry faulting among others, the absence of specific provisions on expatriate quota and local manpower training.
Under the umbrella of the Producers Forum arm of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), the workers also faulted perceived multiple and excessive taxation policy imbedded in the proposed PIB.
In a statement by Comrades Victor Olley and Peter O. Akpenka, chairman and secretary respectively, for the forum, said: "The Forum is concerned about the absence of specific provisions on expatriate quota and local manpower training.
The issue of unfair expatriate quota application in this industry is not the case of lack of sufficient extant laws to protect local manpower, but simply lack of sufficient political will to implement the law. By existing laws, an expatriate should be an expert with skills that local manpower does not possess, such expatriates are supposed to be engaged on short-term basis to provide such skills while serving as mentor/trainer to local manpower under studies seconded for a defined time frame.
Unfortunately, government looked the other way while this country was exploited by all manner of unqualified expatriate staff deployed to fleece this country, with resultant abuse of this provision with its attendant impact on employment and capital flight. No country in the world leaves its borders to all manner of foreigners while her citizens wallow in utter joblessness and penury. This Forum expected that the PIB would find ways to ensure that the right experts are deployed and that the process is made more transparent."
"The Forum recommends that all request for expatriate staff must meet the primary objectives of the need for foreign expert staff, and as such, all experts must meet the local professional body expectations who will verify the expertise level of the expatriate staff locally and through their foreign professional body affiliates. As such professional bodies such as Nigerian Society of Engineers, Society of Petroleum Engineers etc must certify these expatriate as experts indeed before they are offered emigrant status as is done in other countries.
The Forum also recommends that a clause should be added to give the DG of the National Petroleum Directorate in concert with the associated professional body powers to approve any expatriate expert to be employed to work in the downstream, midstream and upstream sectors before a concurrence from the Ministry of Internal Affairs/Immigrations or the relevant government agency can be sought. There is also an urgent need to make data on expatriates in the industry mandatorily accessible and transparent."
On multiple taxation, the Forum said: "The new bill we believe is also intended to increase the amount of investment in the industry, especially in the upstream sector.
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Right on! This withdrawal symptom is the best approach to wean Nigeria from its over dependence on imports of what should have been produced locally. Let the face off between the Feds & the gasoline hoarders continue - in six months or less, we will begin to see a return to nomalcy, depending on who blinks first. It will take a tough love approach like this to break the back of economic saboteurs. Albeit the public may suffer in the short run, they will reap the benefit, eventually, if they can just hang in there.
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