Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun will appear before a House of Representatives’ ad hoc panel investigating Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of governments and private sector over non-remittance of their contributions to the Employees’ Compensation Scheme (ECS).
As stipulated by the Employees’ Compensation Act, 2010, all MDAs at Federal, State and Local government (LG) levels are expected to register and contribute one per cent of their gross income to the scheme.
The scheme, domiciled in the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), is to encourage safety in workplace and provides compensation for death, occupational diseases and injuries, reduce personal, physical and emotional suffering of employees and their relatives as well as minimises bureaucracy and bottlenecks in determining liabilities.
Minister of Labour and Productivity Chris Ngige, his Budget and National Planning counterpart, Udo Udoma as well as the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze and the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, were also expected to appear before the Deputy Minority Leader Chukwuka Onyema – led ad hoc panel today.
They were to explain why the Federal Government is owing NSITF N17 billion since 2015 with the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) owing N16.2 billion since 2010 and several other MDAs.
They were also expected to give detailed account of registered MDAs, total amount budgeted on yearly basis as well as shed light on exemptions from the scheme.
In his presentation, NSITF’s Director General (DG), Adebayo Somefun, who has no idea of the total workforce of his agency, said only Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe states have registered but without commitments.
The rest, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and the 774 councils, have not.
In contravention of the law, the DG said most MDAs have refused to register for the scheme, in spite of the fact that no agency was exempted except uniformed military personnel.
He said civilians working in the military establishments were also expected to participate.
He said contribution to the scheme was supposed to be deducted from source by the Ministry of Finance and the AGF.
Somefun could not however provide the committee with the actual figure owed by individual MDAs, complaining that non-registration by recalcitrant organisations made reconciliation difficult for NSITF.
Inspector-General Ibrahim Idris said the police was elated when the scheme was introduced but could not understand why the Police was excluded.
Idris, who was represented by Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), (Insurance), Ishaku Mohammed, said the AGF was formally contacted in 2014 since the contribution was expected to be deducted from source which has not been the case with the Police.
He said the Budget Office responded in another correspondence that the NPF is excluded from the scheme and should not pay but can approach the NSITF for enrolment.
“We did but NSITF did not ask us for payment, rather a consultant was appointed to work with us and by 2016, a figure of N13 billion was given to us and we were asked to approach the Federal Government for the payment or reimbursement but nothing has happened till now,” he added.
Though the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) claimed that its establishment Act prevented it from contributing to the scheme, it nonetheless promised to work with NSITF on how to reconcile the records.
NSITF was discovered to have defaulted on payment and mandated to pay its own contributions of N394 million to the scheme.
The committee expressed its dissatisfaction with NSITF for not carrying out enough public awareness on the scheme, citing non-activity from state and local governments.
Committee Chairman Onyema said: “Government at all levels should be aware that failure to register and pay the statutory contributions to the NSITF is a gross violation of the law.
“Violating the law exposed the vast majority of Nigeria workforce to uninsured and uncovered risk and occupational hazard, which could not be compensated for.”
