The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has begun its sensitization workshop with members of its Oil and Gas Pipeline Communities as it prepares its five years’ renovation of all oil and gas pipelines within the Niger Delta areas.
The last meeting of the three man committee had come and gone. The Newswriter gathered that members of the 22 cluster communities in Okrika/Ogu/Bolo local government areas including their legal counsels signed an MOU they never read through.
Information reaching The Newswriter desk has it that Etche cluster was divided into two clusters while Okrika and Ogu/Bolo has just one cluster with a meagre fee of N55m only per year.
“Long ago our conscience had been sold. Certain self-imposed kings in Okrika local government area had long betrayed the polity of oil and gas communities’ ownership. They claimed to be owners of all the sources of drinking waters and their surrounding, just for their selfish gains. They had their errand boys here and there. If they are still around they would have asked SPDC not to enter any negotiation directly with the communities owners. Though we had been cheated by SPDC, considering what was due for our Etche counterpart, we signed the MOU without going through it for fear of the unknown”, lamented some aggrieved cluster members.
A source (a member of a three man committee) who has been following up the sensitization meeting said that the five years project would have taken place seven years ago, but owing to the insurgency of the Niger Delta militants it was withheld, adding that even so SPDC was paying huge sums to notable heads of militants for fear of possible attack on the oil and gas pipelines.
The Newswriter gathered that seven years ago the Host communities agitated for about N2 billion, while SPDC was to offer N850 million, which sums were hitherto rejected by both parties, as a certain King was throwing his weight behind SPDC so as to receive the said payment through his bank account.
Meanwhile some people who pleaded for anonymity said, instead of SPDC to go back to the former figure, it has drastically dropped down the amount to N52.7million for 22 communities every year as Community Development fee, pointing out that with this negotiation, SPDC was taking the communities to the same boat.
They warned that if SPDC did not speak well in other meetings to come, they would make public all SPDC’s expenses on other compensations and ex-militants who never watched over their pipelines.
In a related development, The Newswriter has authoritatively gathered that the LNG has held a secret interactive forum with all its Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) beneficiaries from 2005-2011 at Atrium Hall, along Stadium Airforce Road, Port Harcourt.
The interactive forum which was held on September 14, 2012, extensively discussed new areas of development and whether the beneficiaries were still doing well or they would be assisted in one way or the other.
It was gathered that some of the attendants were furious as they were not given better star-packs that were given to the latter years’ beneficiaries, while others were very excited as their present star-packs also included generation and computer sets, among others.
Meanwhile, some host communities’ beneficiaries who were not sent sms in order for them to be part of the forum have tagged the interactive forum a secret meeting, whereby LNG was trying to avoid certain out spoken beneficiaries, adding that LNG selectively hand-picked those who were not host community, indigenes, but mere privileged beneficiaries.
They further pointed out that they would soon expose the (YES) management intent, as far as LNG’s pipeline remain in their soil. ###
Bennett James
