By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

THE Nigeria Social  Insurance Trust Fund, NSITF, among others, was established to deal with issues of employee compensation scheme, ECS, especially workers of both private and public sector under Employee Compensation Act, ECA. In this interview, the Managing Director of the Fund, Maureen Allogoa, speaks about the e-NSITF, staff welfare, and paucity of fund, declaring that getting the states, local governments, and some Federal Government MDAs to buy-into the ESC, is the most critical challenge facing the fund today.

Excerpts:

E-NSITF

The E-NSITF is one of the flagship projects the Fund embarked upon sequel to the Federal Government’s approval of our strategic reform agenda in 2021. The main objective of the project is to bring the Fund in alignment with the digitisation policy of the Federal Government as contained in the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy, NDEPS. 

The project has progressed with the procurement, installation of the software and hardware components. Employees are being onboarded into the network as a prelude to the activation of all components for real-time usage.Upon full implementation, the Fund would achieve greater efficiency in our process, improve our finances through a more robust collection of contributions devoid of leakages and shortages all powered by technology.

It will also enhance the productivity of our staff and speed up the turn-around time for our process in line with ease of doing business.

Informal sector

The Fund in compliance with the provisions of the Employee Compensation Act, 2010, ensures that full compensation accruable to a registered employer or employee is made upon application and necessary processing irrespective of sector, formal or informal.

However, for the informal sector, the Informal Sector Department charged with the responsibility of driving the sector enrolment has made significant impact through series of engagements with the players in the sector. 

Due to the peculiar nature and demographics of workers in the sector, a special framework for compliance and compensation has to be developed to have a clear separation of the funds and contributions from both sectors (formal and informal). While this framework is being developed, management has come up with a project tagged; Project 25K otherwise known as P25K which is an enrolment programme targeted at the informal sector, particularly the small and medium scale enterprises. 

The aim is to register 25,000 new employees over three years in each branch of the federation. As you know, most of these SMEs are also part of the Informal Sector.

NSITF has just concluded a nationwide awareness/sensitization campaign targeting the SMEs. With all this, I would categorically say that NSITF has taken the ECS to many informal sector workers. In specific terms, we have achieved the following: Sensitization of 965 Associations/Unions translating to 65,700 workers; Sensitization of over 65,700 workers in the sector.Internal preparedness for the running of ECS in the informal sector includes, developmentof operational manual for the informal sector department, development of guideline for ECS collection in the sector, development of ECS collection card, development of Informal sector registration form.

Staff welfare, tax remittance, promotion, NHF, others

The welfare of our staff has always been of particular interest to me because I have worked with the employees from my time as Regional Manager. I was an Executive Director Administration where I became fully exposed to the welfare issues. Now being the Managing Director of the NSITF, I have greater opportunity to address those issues that I have been very familiar with.

Therefore, I would continue to make efforts to champion necessary changes in our welfare policy to ensure betterment of staff in order to boost their morale and motivate them for higher productivity. On the issues raised, management and the unions reached a mutually acceptable resolution on all the issues of tax remittance, National Housing Fund remittance and promotion exercise.

Tax remittances

The issue of un-remitted pension has been addressed with the unions. Plans are currently in place to resolve the observed shortfall as mutually agreed at our conciliatory meeting with the Permanent Secretary. On the issue of promotion, to eliminate issues of stagnation as a result of delay in promotion, we will maintain the practice that the Fund concludes promotion exercise within the applicable year.

Currently, efforts are being made to conduct the 2023 promotion within the set time-line. The Fund’s promotion exercise at the officers’ cadre is solely based on performance. Once an officer meets the pass mark, the officer is promoted. However, for the management cadre, promotion is guided by performance and available vacancies.

NHF: The non-remittance into staff account was purely due to operational issue within the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. This has been resolved with the management on consistent engagements. Workers have started receiving alerts on the payments. The Fund has been remitting deducted NHF fund to FMBN as required.

There are proofs to that.

Other welfare interventions made by this administration include the collapsing of the housing allowance differential for the outstation staff. All employees now earn the same salary irrespective of your posting unlike the previous practice where employees in Abuja earn double of the housing allowance for outstation staff. 

The staff health care plan was upgraded in March, 2023 so as to have more coverage for health conditions hitherto not covered in the old health care scheme. This was to ensure that quality health care is accessible to staff. Besides, a new staff condition of service became operational in the Fund, January, 2023 after 28 years of last review.

Extensive provisions were made in the new Staff Conditions of Service, SCS, to address various issues on staff welfare. Operational buses have been procured for distribution to Region/Branch offices to ease mobility for staff engaged in operational activities. This is also to minimize the difficulty compliance officers face on their job. We expanded our operations – now we have an additional Regional office making it in total, 12 Regional offices.

Paucity of funds

Like every organisation in the challenging economy of the day, particularly since the 2020 COVID lockdown, the Fund has had revenue challenges. Due to the general economic downturn affecting businesses, employers struggle to keep up with payment of contributions. 

However, the private sector organisations are doing reasonably well and accounts for more than 90 per cent of our registered employers. Are we shirking our responsibilities in this regard? No, we have been paying promptly all processed and verified claims as and when due. From inception, July 2011 to June 2023, the total contributions collected for the period is N257, 605,383,185.07. Numbers of employers registered is 142, 510. For the year 2023 (January to June), the contribution collected is N17, 972,408,907.33 while the total number of employers registered for the same period is 7,146.

On claims and compensation, the Fund has paid benefits to all deserving employees promptly as and when due. We have made 99,678 claims and compensation in payment from inception July 2011 to June 2023. This year alone, from January to June the total number of claims paid is 8,959 under the various contingencies of medical expenses refund, loss of productivity, death benefits, disability benefits, retirement benefits, further medical treatment.

On prosthesis, we have provided artificial body parts to over 100 disabled workers since inception. This is a form of rehabilitative compensation provided under the scheme which enables the workers who in the course of work have lost a body part to gradually integrate back into society.

However, the most critical challenge of the Fund in implementing the scheme is to have the buy-in of states and local governments and some Federal Government agencies into the scheme. Their compliance with the ECA will definitely increase funds for the scheme. towards increasing our revenue.

I am glad to inform you that the efforts are yielding significant results. To answer your question, we have been paying promptly all processed and verified claims as at when due. We have not and will not shirk our responsibilities in this regard.