By Ayodele Abere.
Employers of labour in Nigeria have been challenged to be conscious of the safety and health of their employees at the workplace.
The challenge came on the heels of a public road walk by the staff of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, who joined their counterparts across the global community to celebrate this year’s ‘World Day For Safety And Health At Work 2022’.
With the theme, “Let’s Act Together To Build A Positive Safety And Health Culture”, the staff in their numbers walked from their office situated on bank/secretariat road, through Awedele, Basiri, Fajuyi, and government house junction, in Ado-Ekiti, sensitizing employers of both the formal and informal sectors on the need to pay due attention to safety and health of all categories of their workforce.
The NSITF as one of the Federal Government agencies has legal mandate of promoting the enforcement of occupational safety and health standard at work place, rehabilitation of employees who suffer work related injuries, occupational diseases or disabilities, providing a fair guaranteed and adequate compensation for all insured employees.
Addressing journalists, the Acting Branch Manager of NSITF, Ekiti Branch Office, Mr. Dayo Olumodeji, said millions of workers die yearly due to work related accidents. Saying that the objective of this year’s World Safety and Health Day, is to see that safety, health and wellbeing is for all and sundry. Adding that, “our culture towards it needs to be positive”.
Stressing further, the Health and Safety culture of an organization speaks a whole lot about how successful they manage their health and safety.
“The Health and Safety culture is simply a system of shared values and beliefs about the importance of health and safety in the workplace and this culture can be either positive or negative”
“Though the Health and Safety culture is difficult to measure but there are a number of factors that help you know if your organization’s culture is positive or negative. The factors are accident rate, absenteeism, sickness rate, staff turnover, level of health and safety compliance and complaints from staff or customers”. Said Olumodeji.
An officer of NSITF, Mr Martin Egua, believed that it is important to work together to build a very conducive work environment. According to him, NSITF had been rehabilitating employees with occupational injuries, disabilities and other health hazards in work places.
“We are saddled with the implementation of employees’ compensation scheme. It is a scheme set up by the Federal Government in 2010, but kicked off in July 2011, by the then President Goodluck Jonathan.
“Through this scheme, NSITF ensures that whatever an employer has spent on an employee is reimbursed. We rehabilitate employees who sustain injuries in work places, sometimes we go ahead to provide aid for them like artificial eye, assistance for those that have broken legs and all that. We provide if not adequate, fair compensation for all insured employees. Although, according to some sections of the Act setting up NSITF, it’s compulsory”. He said one important message being passed to Nigerian employers was to get their employees covered.
“You ought to be with NSITF, you ought to register with NSITF. By this, once you are covered, as an employee, you have more productivity. Once the employee knows that, so if there is any issue in the office, I will get compensated, or my boss will not take time in taking care of me. I see the employees putting more efforts and also I see the day as telling us that our health is our wealth”.
Mr Egua remarked that the scheme had been very effective in Ekiti State because NSITF, has got more than one thousand employers in the State. And none of them had ever complained, except those that were yet to register. He added that registration with NSITF was one of the requirements by the Federal Government before any of the employers could get contract. Hence, all employers of labour must register both in the public and private sectors.
Another officer, Mr Ajibade Ifedayo Emmanuel, said the road walk was to sensitize the people of Ekiti State, and other members of the public, including organizations and offices on how to reduce and eliminate hazards in work places and outside work places.
“We want to ensure that health safety environment is put in place in every office, both small, big and corporate offices. We sensitize them on how to reduce hazards, injuries,occupational diseases can also be reduced or minimized in the course of carrying out official assignments”.
He pointed out that visits to many offices showed that employers did not take precautionary measures in the working environment.
Mr Ajibade added that creating such awareness would enable those concerned to know that they could achieve success in their efforts to reduce the risks.
On penalty for defaulting employers, he said NSITF does have the mandate to enforce penalty but all we are concerned with at the moment is trying to create awareness on ways of recognizing hazards at workplace and how accidents can be prevented.
“Our duty is to ensure that every necessary thing is put in place to ensure that safety at work is enforced in every office so that work hazards or injuries can be eliminated or reduced”.
