The federal government said Thursday that the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory (PPPRA) will soon be scrapped.
Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum resources, spoke this at a round table on understanding the new petroleum industry regulator to be set up by the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB), organised by the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC) and the Media Initiative on Transparency in the Extractive Industry (MITEI).
Kachikwu, however, dismissed the fears that workers of the DPR and the PPPRA would be sacked.
He said the workers will be assimilated into the new petroleum industry regulator to be set up by the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, Vanguard reports.
The minister stated that scrapping of both agencies will provide an opportunity for new persons to be employed into the new entity to be set up, especially as new ideas are sought to fill in gaps that might exist in the company.
He said: “At that time, it has nothing to do with the minister; it is up to the management to retain their staff afterwards. You then have to make sure you actually meet up to task as far your job is concerned. That is how we dealt with the issue of labour.
“After that, with the mandate that each institution would have for efficiency, people there have to work and display their performance in their jobs. But at the inception, the existing jobs would be there, but then people would then have to rise up to the occasion, because those Boards that would be in those entities would be mandated statutorily to ensure efficiency in the public interest.
Therefore, from that point on, you do not have a job for life. You now have to be worth that salary, that money you are paid.”
Kachikwu said what the PIGB has done is to establish a single regulatory authority.
