A group under the aegis of PMB Oil & Gas Progress has warned New York-based Sahara Reporters to desist from spreading fake news on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
A statement by the group’s National Coordinator, Malam Tirmizi Imam in Abuja on Tuesday.
In apparent response to the online news platform’s latest story claiming that “Medical doctors in the EMPLOY of the NNPC Medical Service Limited, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) said they are being treated like slaves”.
The group therefore, argued that Sahara Reporters were “unprofessional” in publishing the story without the response of either the Managing Director of the NNPC Medical section or even the “Nigerian Medical Association”, the body known for being vocal on welfare of all health personnel in Nigeria”.
The group said all the concern workers in the Medical section were not NNPC staff, “they have nothing to do with the NNPC, but persons recruited as Locum doctors by a Labour Supplier”, urging the complainants to “go meet their supplier and stop dragging the NNPC into this”.
Tirmizi, in the statement, went on to say that there has never been any form of contact between the Locum Doctors and the Locum workers and NNPCL as a company.
He urged Sahara Reporters to “always thoroughly investigate their stories and engage relevant stakeholders to balance the news”.
The group further explained that Locum/Contract Staff means “a staff that is granted clinical privileges to provide temporary coverage for another practitioner usually deploy through a third party Labour supplier.”
The group advised the Locum Doctors not to forget that “this is election year and they should not allow themselves to be used as tools of politically-motivated attacks against the image of NNPCL as a company”.
