By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund, NSITF, said it has so far paid about six billion, three hundred and fifty-two thousand, two hundred and eight naira as claims for workplace injuries, diseases, disabilities and death.
The Managing Director of NSITF, Barrister Maureen Allagoa disclosed this weekend while fielding questions from journalists on the occasion of the 2023 World Day for Safety and Health at Work.
Barrister Allagoa, who was represented by the Deputy General Manager, and Head of the Department, Health, Safety and Environment, HSE, said that NSITF has been alive to its responsibilities since the inception of her administration.
She noted that April 28 is a day set aside annually by the International Labour Organisation, ILO, to promote the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases globally, adding that it is an awareness-raising campaign intended to focus on creating a safety and health culture to reduce the number of work related deaths and injuries.
She implored all employers and employees to enrol under the Employee Compensation Scheme in order to benefit from its various services which are targeted at ensuring employees’ welfare.
“We are also calling on all our social partners to join NSITF to prevent workplace injuries, diseases, disabilities and death,” she said.
The Managing Director also said “As usual management lives up to its expectation and discharges its responsibilities appropriately. “
According to her, “We do advocacies, we do audit/inspection, we do a lot of enlightenment to sensitize the working public and through that process, we deliver our messages and obviously through the results we are getting we know that workplace incidence is totally reduced to a reasonable extent.
“The health and safety department has visited not less than 1559 workplaces within the first quarter of 2023 for our various OSH interventions and programmes such as OSH sensitization and enlightenment, OSH audit and follow up audit, accident incident investigation and reporting etc.
“From inception till date our team of HSC officers have visited 23,652 workplaces for our various active and reactive intervention strategies.”
On the claims the Fund has taken care of since her administration came on board in February this year, she said, “The administration departments have paid claims of 5297 deserving employees amounting to Two Hundred and Thirty-Five million and a fraction over. That is just handling claims payment for this particular administration which came in in February.
“From inception till date, we have paid claims of different contingencies such as medical expense reports, deaths, survival benefits, loss of productivity etc to about 96079 deserving employees of registered employers and this has amounted to six billion, three hundred and fifty two thousand, two hundred and eight and fraction over.”