Aggrieved Workers Protest Non-payment of 3-Months wage by HYPREP

Aggrieved Workers Protest Non-payment of 3-Months wage by HYPREP

Faith Kordoo

Community workers at the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) Center of Excellence construction site in Weeyakara in Khana local government area of Rivers State staged a peaceful march to protest the alleged non-payment of their daily stipends for three months by the cleaning giants.

The aggrieved workers threatened to shut down the project until the project coordinator’s office came out to tell them clearly when their wages would be paid.

One of the protesters who opted for anonymity in his demand said: “We want HPYREP to keep to its promises and pay us our daily stipends as they agreed.

“We are aware that those on training are being paid every month, but we are so surprised that, working at the Center of Excellence, we have not received a dime from them. That is why we are staging this protest.

“We have been patient enough. We want them to keep their promise and pay us.

The affected worker revealed they are being owed from October 2023 to January 2024, and this is February.
“They agreed to pay us on Thursday the previous week but they failed us and till now they have not paid so we decided to protest.

“We started the job in August 2023. Our money is supposed to be N10,000 for skilled workers and N5,000 for unskilled workers daily, but they said it is N3,000 they will pay, still they do not want to pay.”

Reacting to the protest, HYPREP’s head of Communication, Enuolare Mba-Nwigoh, noted in a statement that, the Project has approved the payment of the stipend which is an augmented sum paid to the community workers on the site, this week, confirming that the money is being processed.

He explained that the community workers on the site were previously paid between N1,500 and N1,600 by CCECC, the contractor for the Project, and the money in contention is an augmented money to help the workers, noting that the CCECC had said the N1,500 daily amount conforms with industry practice.

Mba-Nwigoh said: “However, the Project Coordinator, Professor Nenibarini Zabbey, places a premium on human interest issues, including staff welfare, and has made a strong case for a review of community workers’ daily allowancess to N5,000 and N6,000. This was graciously approved by the Hon. Minister of Environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, and payment was effected in November 2023.

“We reiterate that HYPREP is a people-centric project and continues to demonstrate this through policies and programmes that engender direct and indirect maximal benefit for the Ogoni people. We can only expect the community workers who have been engaged on a casual basis to reciprocate this gesture by conducting themselves in a manner that would not disrupt the peace and operations on site, as CEER is thriving towards the completion of the project within the timeline.

While urging its stakeholders, including community workers, to endeavour to exhaust engagement paradigms before resorting to protests, which, according to them, could be counterproductive, HYPREP further called for patience and mutual collaboration for the successful completion of projects.