General

Pilotage contract: 46 Intels workers, NOT 11,000, ‘will be affected’

October 20, 2017 10:54 pm

The claim that at least 11,000 workers at the Integrated Logistics Services (Intels) will lose their jobs as a result of the termination of the company’s boats pilotage agreements with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), has been set aside.

At a press conference in Lagos, Adewale Adeyanju, president of the Maritime Workers Union (MWUN), had said thousands of workers would be thrown into the labour market as a result of the revocation of the deal.

“Today, we are aware that Intels has over 5,000 direct employees and over 6,000 indirect employees, which makes it up to 11,000 workers. Most of these employees are Nigerians with families and responsibilities,” he had said.

“We are worried that if this issue is not resolved amicably, their jobs can be on the line.”

But DAILY NIGERIAN, an online platform, said some documents it obtained show that the claim is far from the truth.

The website said its investigation led to the revelation that INTELS has a total of 2,555 personnel in its offices at Onne, Warri and Calabar Ports.

Of this figure, 120 are said to be expatriates.

The termination of the agreement affects mainly INTELS service boats revenue collections. Only the 46 staff handling ‘agency services’ are directly involved in the termination of the agreement.

“The fact of the matter is that these 46 people are the only ones in charge of the multi-million dollar service boats revenue collection. And this is the only agreement terminated by the federal government,” the platform quoted an insider as saying.

The company was co-founded by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Gabriele Volpi, an Italian national.

Volpi has apologised to the federal government over the dispute that resulted in the termination of the agreement, which allowed Intels to receive revenue on behalf of NPA for seven years.

On September 27, Abubakar Malami, attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, on September 27 directed Hadiza Bala Usman, NPA managing director, to terminate the pilotage contract, saying it was illegal ab initio.

Malami said it was in contravention of the constitution and that the company failed to comply with the treasury single account (TSA) policy of the government.

Reacting to the incident, Volip said Intels will “comply with the directive of government” and transfer all the revenue collected from the boats monitoring and supervision services in Nigerian maritime waters to the TSA.