The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has called for the implementation of the workers’ social security coverage in the country.
In a statement issued last Wednesday by the union’s National Secretariat and signed by the National President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, the union said that the social security, workmen compensation and occupational health and safety scheme were critical to the Nigerian workers and that its provision needed to be expanded to cover more workers. Wabba explained that the Employees Compensation Scheme (ECS) implementation has been slow in the formal sector of the nation’s economy, stressing that the congress had made a case for the inclusion of  the  informal sector to optimally benefit from such scheme.
He bemoaned the ugly situation where all employers up till now have not registered in the ECS policy, thereby denying many workers the right to be covered by the scheme.
The NLC boss explained that in advanced countries, every employer is mandated to join the scheme, and as such, every employee is covered by the scheme.
He stressed that in less developed countries, there are many employers in the small scale and informal sectors that are still not part of the scheme, as workers are still not taken care of when they sustain injury at the workplace.
Wabba said that there is still a lot of work to be done to expand the coverage of the scheme, stressing that the leadership of the congress would play active role to ensure that all active workers in the economy and all workers who deserve to have social protection are genuinely covered. He added that the workers and employers need to be educated on the importance of the scheme through direct engagement of the workers at their workplaces.
The labour leader emphasised that the quality of both the compensation and rehabilitation package of injured workers should be  more meaningful to those covered.