Diezani has been accused of withholding pollution workers salaries

The Senate Committee on Environment on Thursday promised to appeal to the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison – Madueke, to pay the 18 months salaries and allowances of the 140 members of staff of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project.

President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2012, approved the setting up of HYPREP to implement the United Nations Environmental Programme Assessment Report on the spill disaster in Ogoniland. Twelve months after, the global body presented a scientific assessment of the 50 years of oil pollution in Ogoniland to the Federal Government.

Allison-Madueke had, while presenting details of the project to President Jonathan, said the team would investigate, evaluate and establish other hydrocarbon-impacted sites and make appropriate recommendations to prevent the pollution footprint from spreading further.

She proposed an initial sum of $1bn to cover the first five years of the clean-up operations, while 140 environmental experts across the world were recruited to ensure provision of potable or alternative sources of water supply, mark out the wells that were too polluted and undertake other strategic framework activities that needed to be in place before its implementation.

However, a section of the members of HYPREP staff met with the Senate Committee on Environment on Thursday, asking the lawmakers to intervene in their matter, because all appeals made in writing to the project’s supervising ministry to pay their 18 months salaries had been ignored.

The leader of the team, Mr. Sam Okedi, told the senators that the intervention of the upper chamber became imperative in view of the fact that their individual families had suffered untold hardship, while some of them had either died or fallen sick due to the unfortunate development.

Okedi said following the creation of the agency on July 20, 2012, the Federal Government appointed the National Coordinator, HYPREP, Mrs. Joy Nunieh-Okunnu, who commenced a recruitment exercise that led to the engagement of 140 employees.

He said the workers, under 10 technical working units, were distributed to Port Harcourt, Bori and Yenagoa but that the head office is at NNPC Towers in Abuja, under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

Okedi said, “The key issue is that the professional technical and management staff recruited across the globe from a large number of countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Switzerland and some countries in West Africa.

“Over the past 18 months, the staff had stayed put to work in order to provide the direction for the project. Today, HYPREP has a strategic plan that can be implemented immediately in four local government areas of Rivers State.”

Members of the Senate committee, which had Senator Bukola Saraki as chairman, and Messrs Ben Ayade, Boluwaji Kunlere and Helen Esuene, among others, as members, sympathised with the HYPREP representatives over their plights.

The lawmakers, however, lamented that their hands were tied because the ministry under which their agency was created, was not the ministry they had mandate to oversight.

Saraki specifically pledged that the committee will, under moral grounds, formally appeal to the Petroleum Resources ministry to pay their salaries.