Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) is considering legal options to compel employers of labour to comply with the provisions of Employees Compensation Act (ECA).
The enabling Act as amended (2011) makes it mandatory for employers of labour to pay 1 per cent of their employees’ emoluments to a pool of insurance fund which is being managed by NSITF.
“We have used the persuasion and subtle approach to enlist the buy-in of employers since the inception of the fund in 2011,” Segun Basorun, a general manager with NSITF, said in Lagos when the management gave details on developments within the Fund.
“But going forward, we’re going to invoke the provisions against employers who have remained recalcitrant and refused to register with ECA scheme,” Basorum added.
The fund acts as a buffer against injuries, loss of body parts, permanent disability or death of an employee resulting from accidents on line of duty. It is indeed a form of social insurance that provides a succour directly to an employee or his/her dependants in the event of untoward occurrences in the course of duty.
While official statistics shows increasing accidents at work places with compelling need for compensation of victims, the rate of compliance with the law by employers of labour has remained abysmally low; a development that the NSITF says cannot continue to fester.
According to Adebayo Somefunin, Managing Director/CEO of NSITF, in the last two years, over, 24,880 claims and compensation had been processed and paid to beneficiaries under different contingencies.
“Within two years of our administration, NSITF has rehabilitated 42 persons, making the total of 54 since implementation of the scheme in 2011,” he said.
“This process entails providing prosthetic limbs for employees who lost a limb in accidents while at work and training such employees on the usage of the artificial limbs. We have also provided hearing aids to some victims. Other beneficiaries in the last two years include.”
He further disclosed that 347 dependents and 448 disability beneficiaries were monthly payroll of the fund as at February 2019. About other 20 persons above the age of 55 years had been paid lump sums on a one-off basis, he said.
On how to access the scheme, NSITF said employer – government or private/individual, was required to pay only one per cent of total payroll of their employees to the NSITF, emphasising that this is at no cost to the employee.
“Once that is done, it becomes the duty of NSITF to carry the burden which otherwise would have gone to the employer where there is a workplace injury, death or disability.” Somefun described the scheme a “no-fault” scheme that covers all categories of workers in every sector of employment.
The law enabling act stipulates that every organisation that employs even one worker is under statutory obligation to register for the ECS; these include domestic staff. It also emphasises that failure to do so amounts to a breach of the law.
According to section 73 of the ECA; an employee means a person employed by an employer under oral or written contract of employment whether on a continuous, part-time, temporary, apprenticeship or casual basis and includes a domestic servant who is not a member of the family of the employer including any person employed in the federal, state and local governments, and any of the government agencies and in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
JOSHUA BASSEY
