Reports: oil company threatening workers standing up for safe working conditions and anti-pollution regulations enforcement

Reports: oil company threatening workers standing up for safe working conditions and anti-pollution regulations enforcement

Summary: 

Unsafe working conditions and failure to receive pay owing had caused workers staffing production and transport facilities owned and operated by South Sudan’s Greater Pioneering Operating Company (GPOC) – the country’s largest oil consortium – to strike. Reason: to get GPOC to live up to its commitments to pay wages and to improve working conditions and health care. 

GPOC has allegedly responding by issuing dire but unspecified threats – “We will take necessary actions,” GPOC is reported as having stated. 

The workers’ association has demanded of South Sudan’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mining that it enforce the regulations protecting environmental and human health by insisting that oil companies undertake the practices requisite to safely produce and transport oil. This failure to enforce – states the union – has yielded the corruption, strife and environmental problems plaguing South Sudan.