NSITF registers 142,510 employers in 12 years

The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) has onboarded 142,510 employers as well as processed and paid 99,678 claims and compensations in the last 12 years.

From January to June this year, NSITF said it paid about 8,959 claims under various contingencies, including medical expenses refund, loss of productivity, death benefits, retirement benefits and further medical treatment.

General Manager, Corporate Affairs, NSITF, Ijeoma Oji-Okoronkwo, told reporters that the Fund also provided prostheses as part of its rehabilitative compensation programme to over 100 employees.

With the new world of work, where organisations are tilting towards working remotely, she said plans were underway to review a new approach to remote working, in case of accidents in the course of work and how victims would be compensated.

“Working remotely is now a new normal. We were at a labour advisory committee meeting recently, where the issue of accidents occurring at home while working remotely was deliberated. We are reviewing new approaches. Our law empowers us to review. Your employer must be aware you are working from home. In case of any accident, we need to collaborate and then your employer must write to us formally as the law provides,” she said.

Giving an update on the e-NSIFT project, in which she said the Fund has completed the first phase and complied with the Federal Government’s directive on ease of doing business and automation of operational activities.

She said since the system is now automated, it has plugged loopholes, which some employers use in shortchanging government, through non-compliance to the contribution of one per cent of workers’ emolument to the Fund.

Oji-Okoronkwo said most employers shortchange the government to get the NSITF compliance certificate, stating that the channel has been blocked through improved innovation.

However, she said the Fund is planning to amend its laws on recalcitrant employers, who fail to contribute to the employees.

“This project is customer-centric and is aimed at ensuring that bureaucracies and bottlenecks experienced in transactions with the Fund are reduced to the barest minimum.

“With the E-NSITF project, our employers can monitor their claims process and generate their compliance certificate, the project will also ensure transparency and reduce turnaround time for all business processes,” she said.

Similarly, General Manager, Lagos Zonal Office, NSITF, Abdul-Lateef Musa, said with about 80 per cent of workers operating in the informal sector, the Fund is using its Project 25,000 as a strategy to get more persons into the scheme.