Okafor Ofiebor (Port Harcourt)
Scarcity of petroleum products looms in Rivers State as the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas, NUPENG, South-South Zone has directed its members, especially drivers of petroleum tankers, to embark on indefinite strike from Friday, June 23.
NUPENG said the strike is to draw the attention of the federal and the state government to the deplorable situation of Eleme Junction on East-West road.
The Union is also complaining about the deplorable portions of Eleme Junction on the Oyinbo axis of Port Harcourt-Aba Expressway which it said has been totally unusable for motorists.
The National Industrial Officer of NUPENG, Bassey Harry confirmed the impending strike to this magazine in a telephone interview on Thursday morning.
He lamented despite the consistent outcries by the Union and others, the federal, state and oil companies who also use the two roads have remained unresponsive.
“Up till now, the Federal and State Government and their various agencies have not responded and therefore we are directing our members to immediately shut down until the roads are fixed at least to usable conditions.”
He added that the Union had directed all depots and tanker drivers to cease operation until the bad roads are fixed.
It would be recalled that the state government had mobilized major companies whose goods and services require the daily use of the roads last year for the repair of the expressways.
Consequently, an undisclosed amount of money was contributed by the stakeholders to fix the roads.
This led to some remedial repairs, but the roads have gone bad again.
The Eleme Junction leads to the four local governments in Ogoniland with big industrial concerns like Indoroma Petrochemical and Fertilizer plant,Oil and Gas free zone, the two Port Harcourt refineries, Notore Fertilizer plants, Onne Ports and West African Container Terminal, Intels, among others along the expressway.
As expected, the notice of the strike has led to panic buying of petroleum products in especially in Port Harcourt.
However, normal sales at the official pump price of N145 per litre continued in some of the petrol stations visited early Thursday morning.