Ogoni cleanup: HYPREP workers protest non-payment of three months wage

Workers working at the Centre of Excellence in Weeyakara, in Khana Council of Rivers State, a project supervised by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project(HYPREP), have protested over alleged non-payment of their daily stipends. 

They threatened to shut down the project until the coordination office came out to tell them when to pay their wages. 
One of the protesters, who preferred anonymity, said: “We want HPYREP to keep to its promises and pay us our daily stipends as agreed.
   
“We are aware that those on training are being paid every month, but we are so surprised that we are working at the Center of Excellence, and we have not received a dime from them. That is why we are staging this protest.
“We have been patient enough. We want them to keep to their promise and pay us.”

“They are owing us from October 2023 to January 2024, and this is February. They agreed to pay us on Thursday the previous week, but they failed us and till now they have not paid. So, we decided to protest.

“We started the job in August 2023. Our money is supposed to be N10,000 for skilled workers and N5,000 for unskilled workers daily, but they said it is N3,000 they will pay, still they do not want to pay.

Reacting, HYPREP head of Communication, Enuolare Mba-Nwigoh, in a statement, said the Project has approved the payment of the stipend, which is an augmented sum paid to the community workers on the site this week, adding that the money is being processed.