World Safety and Health Day: Plan to Prevent Poor Performance, Says NSITF

World Safety and Health Day:  Plan to Prevent Poor Performance, Says NSITF

By Chris Paul

As the working community of the globe celebrated safety and health at work, yesterday, the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSIFT) has preached about the need to plan in order to prevent poor performance.

Speaking on the occasion of the World Safety and Health Day, Assistant General Manager in the Agege Branch Office, Mrs. Muibat O. Alabi, encouraged all employers to invest now in resilient OSH system as a preventive measure for accident occurrence.

NSITF is saddled with the implementation of employees’ Compensation Scheme (ECS).

In a statement issued yesterday, Alabi stated that: “The emergence of the COVID 19 pandemic is an eye opener and has thought us a lesson that we need to plan and prepare for emergencies.”

She further stated that the pandemic had touched nearly every aspect of the world of work, from the risk of transmission of the virus in workplaces, to occupational safety and health (OSH) risks that have emerged as a result of measures to mitigate the spread of the virus.

According to her, it is often said that proper preparation prevents poor performance.
“So is any person that fails to plan, has already planned to fail.
“There is no way a person will plan without envisaging outcomes,” she stated.

Often celebrated annually by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the 28th April, the envisioning of outcomes, appropriate planning for the envisaged outcomes and timely and adequate responses speak to the theme of this year’s World Day for safety and Health at work 2021.

NSITF, which has a profound interest and mandate in the welfare of the employees, joined the ILO in commemorating the World day for safety and health at work.

Being a service providing government agency, the NSITF currently manages the Employees Compensation Scheme (ECS).

The ECS is a scheme established by the Employees Compensation Acts (ECA) 2010 passed into law in December 2010 by the assent of President Goodluck Jonathan GCFR, to give a statutory backing to the mandate given by the section 71(2) of the PRA to NSITF for the provision of social security insurance services.

Section 1(a) of the ECA 2010 sets out to provide for a system of ‘Guaranteed ‘Compensation for all employees or their dependents for any death, injury, disease or disability arising out of work or in the course of employment. Section 7(1) further empowers employees who fall within the stated objective to be entitled to payment of compensation in accordance with part IV of the Act.

Someone would ask, how is this scheme funded? The Act provides that all employers, both in the public and private sectors fund the scheme by contributing 1% of the employees’ total payroll, consisting of total emoluments.

Since the commencement of the scheme in 2011, Alabi said: “NSITF has proactively engaged stakeholders in ensuring the safety of employees in work place through her mandate of promoting the enforcement of occupational safety and health standards in the workplace.”

According to her, NSITF anticipates risks at work place and when avoidable and unavoidable accidents happen, the fund with her experienced workforce and branches nationwide respond appropriately and ensure adequate compensation is paid.

She said most registered employers whose employees are captured with NSITF, continuously enjoy Medical expenses refund, Disability benefits, death benefits, loss of productivity benefits and rehabilitation.

“At the moment, cases of industrial accidents, injuries and diseases are being promptly treated as they are reported in full compliance with the Act and to the satisfaction of the stakeholders,” state the NSITF Agege branch Assistant manager.

Despite the laudable benefits of this scheme, she stated that: “The rate of compliance is still low thereby reducing the number of beneficiaries.

“However, with our team of well trained, informed and seasoned enforcement officers who frequently meet with employers to educate them on the benefit of the scheme, we are playing our part and we will continue to play our part and ensure that with resilience we continue to anticipate risks in workplaces, appropriately planned to mitigate such risks through our statutory mandate and respond to such risk and concurrencies in timely and adequate manner.”

Emphasizing the need to reduce occupation and health hazard by all and sundry, she affirmed that: “It is a collective responsibility and we must all come together to collectively anticipate, plan and appropriately respond to envisaged outcomes.”

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