The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), has expressed concern over high infux of Indian expatriates in the oil and gas industry in the country.
Mr Festus Osifo, PENGASSAN’s President, stated this at the closing of the 3rd edition of the three- day Energy and Labour Summit in Abuja on Friday.
The theme of the summit is: “The Future of Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry: Energy Mix, Energy Security, Artificial Intelligence, Divestment, and Crude Oil Theft”.
Osifo said that the increasing dominance of expatriates, particularly Indian nationals in the sector was alarming. “They are taking over low-level jobs, which is a blatant abuse of the expatriate quota system.
“In Sterling Oil today, it will amaze you to discover that we have more Indians working there compared to the number of Nigerians.
“In fact, up to vulcanisers, you have Indians carrying out such low jobs and functions in all their plants as operators and some are even gate keeping operators,”he said.
Osifo said that the union have been engaging the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB) to address the issue but to no avail.
According to him, today Nigerians are looking for jobs, our graduates who are out from the universities are looking for work to do. “But we keep granting expatriate quota to these Indian companies and they have abused it, ”he said.