By Jonathan Lois
The Jahi Branch Manager of the NSITF, Anita Hassana Galadima, has stressed the need for safety to be prioritized in all areas.
She said this on the occasion to mark the world day for health and safety.
Speaking on a programme by the Fund to mark the day, she said said there was need for sensitisation on the matter.
She said they were going out to continue to reach out to people outside and let them know what its all about.
Her words, “In our office we have a Health and Safety Department and so this part of their mandate. When they go out there they sensitize the people that in a working environment you are supposed to be safe and everything should be kept safe.
“We at the HNC department, what we do is to sensitize employers on how to take care of their office, how to put in place safety measures that they should make use of so that when they start work they will enjoy the office and there will be no accidents. However, in case such things occur we are here in NSITF are here to take care of it by way of compensation when its reported to us we look at it and then we compensate them based on the work hazard.
“There’s nothing you will do that you will not encounter challenges but for now whatever challenges we encounter is something that we can handle for now. We’ve not encountered anything that is big for us to handle but there are challenges precisely internally. But they are things that we can handle on our own.”
Also a Principal Manager of the Fund, Mrs. Nwosu Ogechi, also emphasized the need for safety.
She said, “The program is about keeping people safe while work. It is all about teaching and telling them how to mind their work. How to take precaution, how to know what to use, when to report, how to report when any incident or disease happens at the work place.
“Basically what we do at NSITF. It is an ECE program where we take care of workers then we make them report 17 – 14days in a case of injury, death, disease or disability.
“We already have a program in place and that’s why the road show we are going for today is to sensitize even the unskilled workers. We meet them at their shops. Generally we meet the masses and then we sell this idea to them.
“We try to make them get registered while outside the work place, that’s what we do. So basically today is the main day 28th of April and what we are doing is to go out there and reach them we’re not going to the offices today, we’re going to the work places where people that cannot really come to us are and we get them registered.
“What we do basically is that we have a group that caters for this uneducated workers, so we go out there reach out to them and encourage them to register, that’s what the road show is all about we get to sensitize them for them to know that they also belong to Nigeria and they can assess and enjoy the benefits of registering with NSITF.”
