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•Says Fund not revenue generating agency
From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, on Tuesday, said he has set up a committee to look into some of the complaints and petitions against the staff and management of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).
Lalong disclosed this when he and the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mrs Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, and some directors visited the NSITF headquarters in Abuja. The minister said he receive many complaints against the Fund, bothering on monies paid and refunded, unfair administrative practices, illegal employment and irregular promotion, among others.
He noted that the investigations were not to witch-hunt anyone, but to help them improve on the discharge of their duties.
The former Plateau State governor, said; “We will also visit some of your facilities to see first hand, because, yes, we saw achievements, but we also saw a lot of complaints too that came from this agency.
“We saw complaints about monies paid and refunded. We had complaints about unfair administrative practices and also irregular promotion. We had complaints about lack of vacancies and stagnation of staff. There are also court cases regarding the disengagement of certain staff of the Fund.
“Others are disharmony between inhouse union and management, staff grievances on irregularities of grade level collation, mass employment of persons to fill up vacancies in the Fund and bad conditions of service.
“Disharmony amongst management staff of the Fund, insubordination of staff, no clear direction on the implementation of the E-NSITF phase 11 and many other issues.”
“As a way forward, I quickly set up a committee and that committee, I am going to inaugurate tomorrow to handle all these, summarise them and bring them to me. Like I said, all these are meant to improve your services. It is not to witch-hunt anybody, because anywhere I go, if I can’t add any value, I realise I have not done anything.”
On her part, the NSITF Managing Director, Barr Maureen Allagoa who listed some of the achievements of the Fund, enumerated some challenges that hindered the attainment of other monumental achievements that the Fund would have benefitted from in the fulfillment of its mandate.
Allagoa said a prominent challenge that had occurred in 2022 with a threat to reoccur in 2023 was the implementation of the deduction of 40% of the employers’ contribution to the Fund by the Ministry of Finance as an operating surplus under the premise of the implementation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
According to her, “N1.4bn was deducted and paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) in line with the Finance Act 2020.
She further noted that the NSITF was not a revenue generating agency but more like a labour market institution with a tripartite operations structure of the Government, the Labour unions (NLC, TUC) and the Employers Association (NECA).
“The monies that accrues to the Fund are funds held in trust for the benefit of employees under the ECS and cannot be regarded as operating surplus. The NSITE is not treasury funded and does not draw from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.” She noted.
The said another challenge was the limitations of the ECA 2010 is that it did not cover some situations especially in the areas of claims and compensation and the informal sector.
She explained that those existing gaps in the law had variously been exploited by dubious employers to the detriment of employees, adding that there was need for an amendment of the Act to close up these gaps.
Another challenge the Fund was faced with according to Allagoa was the big hurdle of the implementation of the recent FEC approval for the deduction at source of the 1% ECS contributions for all workers in the Public service of the Federation and the appropriation for the backlog of arrears from 2012 to 2023.
“It is in the same vein that the Fund humbly request the Honourable Minister’s urgent assistance in:Interfacing with the Ministers of Finance and that of Budget & National Planning to facilitate the payment of the ECS contribution arrears of 2012 to 2023 which runs into billion.
She further begged the Minister to facilitate the an Interface with the Minister of Finance and the Accountant General of the Federation to remove NSITF from the schedule of the Fiscal responsibility Act for the deduction of 40% of contributions received from the private sector.
“Over N1.4b was deducted from our account in 2022 and much more may be deducted this year save for your intervention.” She said.
