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…Unfolds strategies to arrest menace, better service delivery
The leadership of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, is concerned over increasing use of its brand name by unscrupulous elements to commit all sort of crimes that is not only staining its image, but dragging its reputation to the mud.
At its National Educational Seminar in Lagos, with the theme, “creating a sustainable brand as a trade union for positive social change”, NUPENG unfolded various strategies to checkmate the menace and ensure better service delivery.
Welcoming participants and other guest, NUPENG President, Prince Williams Akporeha, said “Over time, we discovered that some individuals have selfishly and wickedly been exploiting our good name and brand by committing crimes and other nefarious activities most especially using the platforms of our informal branches to commit these criminal acts. It is so sad to note that fake NUPENG identity cards are all over town with these bad eggs using them to defraud innocent individuals and corporate organization.
“To build a positive brand we must collectively find ways to prevent this. One major way we intend to do this is the introduction of new imitation proof biometric identity card for all our informal sector branches members with effect from first quarter of 2020.
We are collaborating with a reputable IT Firm to come out with a new membership identity card that will have series of security features to prevent forgery and will also come with card readers to identity genuine members from fake ones. Any member that commits fraud or other crimes will also be easily identified and prosecuted.
“Another area we intend to focus on is the NUPENG stickers (Big and Small) which is our unique identity everywhere for our cars, petroleum trucks, our stalls and tanks (ELD, SUTAKEP and LPGAR Branches). We have been using these stickers for decades and we are known by these stickers. Unfortunately, these stickers have also been imitated. There are so many fakes NUPENG stickers out there, thereby stealing our unique identity and also denying us the usual revenue from printing. It is our intention to re-design them to stop our identity theft. In the formal sector, we intend to polish our image and improve the public perception of what we stand for.
“We discovered in the last few months that some managements are afraid of relating with us because of the negative perception that we are very difficult and unreasonable in our demands and approaches to issues. To some of them, the name NUPENG connotes troubles, unreasonable demands, stubbornness and recalcitrant attitude; therefore we are not wanted in their workplaces to organize the workers. Indeed, we have seen some of our units and branches leaders exhibiting some of these bad traits and attitude.
There is no way we can build sustainable brand with large membership, increase income and effective service delivery with such negative attitude and approaches to issues.
“Recently, the leadership of the Union was forced to suspend a branch chairman for such unruly, irresponsible and uncontrollable behavior. The recommendation for his expulsion from the union will be tabled at the next National executive Council meeting of the Union.
Our new approach to resolving Industrial Relations issues will be through social dialogue, collaborations and networking with government and non-governmental agencies for leverage and effectiveness. We shall restrict withdrawal of services and strike actions to tool of very last resort.”
