Tanker drivers shelve nationwide strike, give FG more time

By Etuka Sunday

Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD), a branch of NUPENG has shelved its planned nationwide strike by giving the federal government more time to meet its demands.

Recall, PTD gave an ultimatum last month, warning the federal government of an impending strike action in parts of the South-South and South-East if Port-Harcourt-Eleme junction road, Okigwe-Umuahia and Jebba-Ilorin road were not urgently repaired as demanded.

Members had on the expiration of the ultimatum boycotted these roads and refused to lift products on the axis and for the second week running now.

However, rising from its national meeting yesterday in Abuja, PTD directed its members to resume work in those areas where it has earlier withdrew their services.

Speaking, its National Chairman, Comrade Salimon Oladiti said, “after due consideration and wider consultations in addition to the intervention by the Department of State Security (DSS) and Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Petroleum, Chief Ifeanyi Uba, Chief Executive of Capital Oil among other stakeholders in the Oil and Gas Industry, we have directed our members to resume work in these areas where we had earlier withdrew our services.”

Comrade Oladiti said, the Union has the plan of going on nationwide strike especially by extending it to zones like; Lagos, Warri, Kaduna and Abuja, but the Union agreed to response to the clarion call made by the DSS and Permanent Secretary Petroleum Ministry and Chief Ifeanyi Uba among other stakeholders to give the government more time to attend to those roads.

According to him, the road from Jebba to Ilorin, a distance of about 100 kilometer usually take a whole day for our members to cover, Port-Harcourt-Eleme junction, a distance of about 15 kilometers takes over five hours and the same thing goes for Okigwe-Umuahia road.

PTD Chairman said, we have heed the call by the authorities concerned, granted more time as requested with hope that government would fulfill its part of the promise by making the roads motorable, while on our part, we shall continue to serve the nation better and more efficiently in the haulage sub-sector. We however warned that failure to fulfill this promise, we may not give any further notice of an action.

However, “we believe after the meeting that the intervention may yield results. We are approaching 2015, and we don’t want a situation whereby, some people will misinterpret our action to be supporting a particular party while in actual sense, we are fighting a genuine course.”