DESOPADEC office in Warri shutdown over workers’ protest

Following the sustained protest embarked upon by junior workers of the Delta State Oil Producing Area commission, (DESOPADEC) since Monday, the office complex along Warri/Sapele road has been shut down indefinitely.

Scores of the workers, including a cop whose life is said to be hanging in the balance, had sustained varying degrees of injuries since the protest began on Monday.

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of DESOPADEC, Olorogun Williams Makinde in a memo issued on Thursday night, said the office was shut down over the violence that greeted the supposed peaceful protest.

The management of the commission is reported to have relocated its meetings to Lagos in order to deflate the growing agitations against it, alleging that the junior workers were violent in their agitation hence the deployment of armed policemen to quell the protest with canisters.

The protest started on Monday but turned bloody when a police security chief at the commission, ASP Lucas Medudu, allegedly gave orders to his colleagues to shoot and teargas the protesters at the Commission’s headquarters in Warri.

An unidentified cop, during the melee that followed, was shot in his leg at the closed range by one of his own colleagues and rushed to Warri Central Hospital from where he was later transferred to Delta State University Teaching Hospital, Oghara, Delta State where doctors are said to be battling with his life.

The junior workers, under the auspices of Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations Civil Technical and Recreational Service Employees (AUPCTRE) DESOPADEC branch, led by Comrade John Osah, had been protesting their poor work condition, deduction of salary arrears, non-promotion of staff for 10 years, among other grievances.

The protesters had also accused the commission’s management of failure to approve 13-month allowances and other benefits due to them since 2010.

The protest had paralysed business activities and vehicular movement in the ever-busy Warri/Sapele road in Warri.