The introduction of the Employees’ Compensation Scheme (ECS) by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) is aimed at providing succour to workers who sustain injury or death in the course of their duties. The managing director of the Fund, Oluwaseun Faleye, spoke with COLLINS OLAYINKA and other journalists on the challenges the scheme faces from both workers and employers.
What is the NSITF doing to boost public awareness of its Employees’ Compensation Scheme (ECS)?
We are set to launch a mass advocacy and sensitization campaign to boost compliance and enrolment in the Employees’ Compensation Scheme. Despite the scheme’s enormous benefits, awareness remains a challenge. Many Nigerians are still not aware of the benefits that this scheme offers them. This campaign will leverage media engagement, stakeholders’ partnerships and grassroots outreach to ensure that every worker, employer, and relevant stakeholders understand their rights and obligations under the scheme. We intend to use both traditional and new media to advocate these benefits.
Yes, we have a lack of awareness, but even for those that are aware, the fact is that we find it is a big challenge to enforce what the law has mandated us to do. Sometimes, members of our staff have gone on inspection and they are prevented from assessing the facilities in which they are supposed to inspect, be it inspecting the health and safety compliance status of those organizations or even inspecting their books to see whether they are compliant. So, we would like to see us have a bit more enforcement. We are engaging with the National Assembly to see that we have the necessary powers to enter into premises and or lock premises that are endangering the lives of employees.
But my real thoughts would be to the employees themselves. Beyond this lack of awareness is also a penchant for employees to join employers in short-changing themselves. We have seen instances where employees would be the ones advising the employer to reduce the number of staff that they have or reduce the amount they earn in calculating what is due to be paid to NSITF or any relevant regulatory agency. I say to them that they are short-changing themselves because when accidents occur, your payment or compensation will be calculated based on what you declare to us that you earn monthly. So, if you connive with an employer, acting like a good employee to reduce what you earn monthly when accidents happen, we will only pay you a portion or a percentage of what you declare to us. So, ultimately, you are short-changing yourself.
So, in our advocacy, we want to target those employees, particularly accountants and finance directors and all of those working in the finance department, to please desist from these sorts of practices because they will ultimately be the losers for it.
What is the focus of the new management team that you lead?
We aim to reposition NSITF for sustainability and greater impact. We have four basic principles. These principles include financial prudence and transparency. We intend to ensure financial accountability in fund management. Another element of our key fundamental principle is operational efficiency. It is only through operational efficiency that we can deliver the sort of service that we have committed to. We believe that internally streamlining our operation to derive optimal efficiency will ultimately impact our service delivery to stakeholders and subscribers of the scheme.
We have committed an enormous time within the organisation to look at how we undertake business, to look at how we process claims, to look at how we process compensation, to look at how we register intending subscribers to make doing business with us much easier. Those initiatives are continuing, and as we review our operations, we will continue to look for ways to improve them and deliver better service.
Are there specific steps that have been outlined to increase enrollees into the ECS?
We are committed to a much deeper stakeholder engagement and compliance drive. We intend to expand enrollment and compliance across all levels. For us, driving compliance is not just driving compliance for the sake of compliance. We believe that the root of what we do is contributing our quota to the economic development and economic productivity of Nigeria.
If a large percentage of our workforce is committed to productivity, to undertaking the work that they signed up to do, knowing that whenever anything happens, as they are sometimes bound to happen, they will have social safety net to cater for their needs or their dependence, be it in terms of accidents, disability, mental health challenges, and even for the employers, loss of productivity. All these initiatives that we are trying to tackle help solidify the confidence of employees in giving their best in their place of work.
What are your plans for the informal sector of the economy?
We are also exploring various initiatives regarding the informal economy of the country. Data suggests that the informal economy is the most vibrant economy for us. 70 per cent of our economic activities are within that economy. We, therefore, believe that tailoring or finding a social safety net within the employee compensation scheme that works for that economy, as diverse and as dynamic as they may be, would protect greater things for us in Nigeria.
We have devoted a lot of thinking to how to ensure the informal sector comes under the umbrella of the employee compensation scheme. Very soon, we will be rolling out initiatives that are tailor-made for small and medium businesses, road transport workers, NURTW and all sorts of small and informal activities that are part of this economic landscape.
What is the NSITF doing to ensure early settlement of claims and what have been the impacts of the Scheme?
We do this every day, all the time. I think one of the advocacy campaigns would be to bring forth some of these ordinary Nigerians that every day are engaging with us one way or the other and are benefiting from this scheme. And that probably would demonstrate to the larger public why they should subscribe to the scheme. These achievements reflect our commitment to ensuring that workers who suffer work-related injuries or disabilities receive the support they deserve and require.
What are you doing to prevent infractions and corruption by your staffers?
In our pursuit of accountability and transparency, we have forged a strategic collaboration with the ICPC. A few days ago, we visited the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to demonstrate our commitment to transparency in managing the resources that have been entrusted to our care. The visit was aimed at building a partnership that makes us much more resilient and sustainable as an organization.
NSITF has made several attempts at digitalising its operations, with several billions spent on it. What is the update on the project? Will this current management probe the execution of the project?
Yes, the NSITF has made several attempts at digitalization in the past. But unfortunately, here we are. We still have enormous digitalization challenges. From my record, that project was awarded sometime in 2022. As we speak, there is nothing on the ground to suggest that anything of note has been delivered. The feedback that we have internally is that the project is severely challenged in terms of delivery. We are looking into it in terms of what has been delivered and what has been spent. It is on this basis that we have employed the services of a reputable consulting firm, KPMG, to review what was delivered by the contractor vis-à-vis what it was contracted to deliver. But digitalisation for us is what we expect it to be. It is a tool for the advancement of what we do, and that tool should be clear to everybody. The plan is to digitalise our processes fully. We are committed to doing that, irrespective of the situation we meet on the ground.
Are there specific projects your management team wishes to focus on among the inherited ones?
I think that the conversation is not about what project we are discarding or the ones we are going ahead with. NSITF has a lot of initiatives going forward. One of the key things that we are focused on is improving our services and culture, generally to deliver our services.
What is NSITF doing to deepen the culture of prevention of occupational accidents in the workplace?
What our team seeks to do is to visit locations to look at their safety status, undertake safety audits of the work environment and suggest ways to make them much more compliant in a way that reduces accidents in the workplace or work-related accidents. We also undertake safety training and general awareness for our subscribers. For us, we think that prevention is better than cure, and that is why we have initiatives geared towards that. We seek to improve that going forward. Part of improving that going forward is also developing our in-house capacity to respond to these issues as they occur. We have stepped up training initiatives for our staff to be able to offer more to subscribers going forward. We have continued to develop capacity in that regard.
