THISDAY, Vol. 16, No. 5831, Page 31
Monday, April 11, 2011
9 BusinessWORLD
news Minister Directs ConocoPhillips to Halt Retrenchment . .
injster of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu , has dinected management of ConocoPhillips to suspend any proposed retrenchment exercise in the company, in order to allow for a conducive atmosphere for social dialogue. The minister stated this while reacting to claims by the Peo-oleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) that (Wogu)' he has given approval
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By Lillda Eroke to management of ConocoPhillips to downsize its workforce . The oil workers' union had earlier threatened to embark on a nationwide strike to protest the plan by management of ConocoPhillips to sack workers . in the company.
planned industrial action, noted that the intervention of the ministry was ongoing and called on all stakeholders to maintain peace.
Wogu, in a statement by the Assistant Director (press) , Prince Samuel Olowokere, maintained that he (the minister) did not consent to the planned retrenchment in the company, iosisting that tlle min-· istry only intervened in the dispute in a bid to avoid industrial crisis in the oil sector. The Minister, while appealing .to lahour to shelve its
'The minister wishes to use
this medium to inform all stake holders in the Oil and Gas sector as well as organised labour in Nigeria that the Federal Minisrry of Labour and Productivity had intervened in the rrade dispute between the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of
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(PENGASSAN) and Philips Oil Company Nigeria Ltd over a proposed sack of workers in the company. "The intervention is still ongoing and at no time did the Ministry approve of the proposed sack of workers by ConocoPhiIlips as alleged in the media as no further stakeholders' meeting has been held on the issue as of date. "Both parties have been duly informed and advised the Managemert of ConocoPhilJips to suspend any proposed retrenchment exercise in order.to allow for a conducive atmosphere for social dialogue at the scheduled meeting and PENGASSAN has been so informed:' Wogu said. The millister added that a ~ " meeting of all the relevant stakeholders in the matter would be held very soon to address the issues of concem to the parties and evolve a constructive. way forward . ..
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"L-R: ChaimUJII of AMCON,Alita}; Kolll Be/gore Solicitor to tl.. 1hatees, Mrs OlllwaJoyin Salin; durillg the comp;etioll of three Trillion debt issuance
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progra::; in Ahuja ... recently
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Food Contamination: NigerialllTA, and W'Bank Collaborate
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economy.
a solution to the problem:' says Ranajit Bandyopadhyay, llTA PatholOgist. "If farmers apply allasafe1M, they can sell their maize at premium prices .and above all it would guarantee the safety of home-grown food and health of consumers:' he added. In on-farm research trials in
. The new approach, which Includes drawing a road map to tackle atlatox.ins, is part of the Commercial Agriculture Programme Development (CADP) that is being supported by the World Bank, and implemented in Kano, Kadun a, Enugu, Cross River and Lagos states. "It is a major step by the government towards ensuring fCX>d safety and food security;' says A.M. Babandi , National Coordinator of CADP. Produced by the fungus Aspergtllus flavus, aIlatoxins are fungal contaminants that hUrt rrade and people's health WIth studies pointing to them .; the cause of liver cancer. In some cases. such as in Kenya aflatoxin-contaminated maize' consumed resulted in severaJ
deaths. Poultry and fish arepar-ticularly vulnerable to aIlatoxins, which influence their productivity. In Nigeria, resoUrce-poor IIllUze fanners face rejection from the premium food market due to aIlatoxin contamination. The collaboration among Nigeria, IITA, and the World Bank will roll out and make available to farmers a biocontrol product called aIlasafe1M that would SlOp the aflatoxin nlen-
ace. 'This is good news to farmers because they now have
By Crusoe Osagie
Kaduna state - n~rth cenrraJ Nigeria - during 2009,and 2010, farme", who treated their fields with aIlasafe1M were able to reduce the levels of allatoxin contamination by about 80 to 90 per cent. The efficacy of aIlasafe1M. earned the product a provlslonitl regisrration from NAFDAC. Stakeholders including farmers at tlle meeting in Ibadan discussed effortS to stem aIlatoxin spread. They unanimously said that a collecnve action was necessary to tackle aIlatoxlIls, WIth Nestle consid-
ering supporting famiers with training on pre- and post-harvest handling of maize including storage. Lucas Akapa, Senior Operations Officer, World Bank, said the meeting was a success as partners agreed "to develo!' a. holistic srrategy to help Nlgena fight allatoxins." "At the end, we hope to have a road map which will be driven by Nigerians with the purpose of ending the menace of aIlatoxins. enhancing farmers ' lllcome, and guaranteeing food safety;' he says.
Bankers' Committee Target 7% Agric Sector Lending
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proposed retrenchment exer-
cise. Oginni alleged that the union had received a letter from ConocoPhillips on its plan to sack majority of Nigerians workers in the company and described'· the step as "unjust and unprocedural ." " If urgent action is not taken to avert the situation by the Minster of Labour and Productivity, all our members in the upstream producing company will embark on indefinite industrial action:' he said. The unionist also alleged that the company had successfully transferred nine jobs being handled by qualified and competent Nigerians to their offi~s in the U.s and Europe in the last two years .
. Telecoms Sector Has Contributed N300bn to FC Coffers - NCC
T
igeria has joined forces with llTA and the World Bank to help contain the contamination of food crops by aIlatoxins, as the oilrich nation aims to make agriculture the main driver of its
Lagos Zonal Chairman of PENGASSAN , Folorunso Oginni , who issued the slrike notice, alleged that the management of the company claimed that it had gotten the approval of the Ministry .to embark on the
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change in the structure . banks' balance sheet th~ Bankers' Committee have brged banks to increase their lending to the agriculturaJ sector to about 7 per cem. Govemor of the CenrraJ Bank ~~ Nigeria and Chairman of the ' Bankers' 'CQrIllIlittee, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi made this call at a retreat on th; Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharin AgriculturaJLendino held in Lagos on Frida The forum, which had almos/ill the Chief Executive of banks' in attendance, was organised by the Sub-Comrruttee on Economic Develop~e~t. .. Sanusl srud: If we can move from one per centlo 6 per cent or eve 7 n per cent, we would have t the banking system running. that sed ' th ssebavUlgs " are rat m e anking system are supposed to
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By Obinna Chima be chrumelled to.the real sector. "AgriculturaJ production has been where it was since 1960. There has been no increase in the quality of seeds and there has been no value added. Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world but accounts for zero per cent of terms of value added " he said. ' The regulator however identitied Nigeria's weak infrasrructural facilities, epileptic power supply, poor research and development system among others as Some of the drawbacks that had hindered the growth of the Nigerian agriculturaJ sector. He also disclosed that banks would II bo co a rate with the Abuja Cornmodity Exchange on the marketin. nflhp ~""""M"
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The Committee identified cotton, tomato, mruze, sorghum, rice and cassava productions as some value-chains which it wants to f",;us on. 'We have to start from somewhere. It could be rice, tomato or any other, all we 'need is just to start somewhere. Why should Nlgena be ImportJ~g tomato from Ghana? The nce that we unport from India was produced lO years ago. We have to re-rrace our steps. If we are really talking about fixmg the economy, we n""! to fix the agncultural sector to . :Ie to generate Jobs and :!'~~U~::h~~e econ(}Earlier, the Chairman SubCOmmittee on Economic Development and Grou Managm ' g Director of AccesPs Bank Pic, Mr. Aigboje AigImokhuede, said thaI the ob;"",tive of the retreat was to determme ways of imorovino Ihp
he Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communic a tion s Commission (NCC), Dr Eugene Juwah, has disclosed that the telecoms sector has contributed more than N300 billion to the coffers of the Federal Government through Frequency Spectrum sales in'the last decade. Dr. Juwah, who stated this at the International Communication lecture oroanised by the Nigerian Swedish Chamber of Cornmerce over the weekend in Lagos, said that this has enabled government to plough back revenues eamed from the sector for provision of development infrastructure at the various levels of government. He stressed that the revenue earned has impacted positively on the economic growth of the country, with the telecoms sector now contributing significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GOP), which was hitherto dominated by the oil and """tor. Referring to a 2010 report by Pyranud Research, Juwah said that the annual revenue from mobile services represents between 2percentand 7 percent of African countries' Nominal GOP; with Nigeria accounting for close to 4 per cent rorio. He added that the sector has also attracted more than US$18 billion in private sector investments.. including Foreign Direct Investment to the nation's economy as at 2009. On poor quality of service in the IIldustry, Dr. Juwah said that
m~ive investments by opera-
tors mto the telecoms sector will address the issue of poor service 9uall ty. He added that massive lllvestments will also suslain the growth level of the sector. Commenting on what the Commissi0!1 was doing to address the Issue of poor service quality, he said that the NCC has set up a task force to address the Issue and has finalised on the draft re~ulation and key performance mdicators that will make operato", fully accountable on ISSUes of quality service. He added that the NCC has put in place a monitoring and enforcement unit to tackle the
seemingly inrractable problem of ........ 1:_ . . •• . _ _~
TELECOM By Efem Nkanga commission of some operator sites showed that some were
more than 30 per cent conoested. This discovery, he said, p~ompt ed the commission to issue a
tw(}-week deadline to the operators to decongest their networks or face sanctions. He lamented that huge demand of telecom services in the counrry, without commensurate matching infrastructure invesrrnent, had contributed to the negative impact on quality of seIVlce.
He added that the cornmission was aware of the need to address the seemingly inrractable problems of service quality and was making effortS to tackle it because it is aware mat improved quality of service would enable the optimisation of the various mobile networks for the benefits of the subscribers and enhancement of the national networks potentials. On SIM Card regisrration Juwah disclosed that the NcC recently commenced the nation-
wide regisrration of existing SIM Cards III the country because it considered it a velY irnporrant aspect of managing a structured growth that will ~rovide the regulator WIth definue and reliable statistics about the subscribers on all network in the country. . He SOld the regisrralion is so unportant that it will nOl only ~nable security agencies to etfecu~eJy fight crimes associated
WIth the use of mobile phone ser-
VJces, ~ut w~ also assist the reg:'
ulatar In the Introduction.of news services and solutions such as Number Portability. This, he stressed, will assist other agenCIes of govemment who need very reliable statistics as well as the operato", that need to predict the preferences of their diverse customers. He said that the fact that operators had independently began the regJSrranon process does nOl me:an that there w ill be a duplicall.on of registration as all the reJ~lStratj on s
will hP. h ~ nTI"'";<'M