Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has indentified the lack of a reliable National Data Bank as an impediment to national development
Oshiomhole stated this yesterday, when he granted audience to a delegation of the Nigeria Insurance Trust Fund led by its Managing Director and Chief Executive, Alhaji Umar Abubakar in Government House, Benin City.
The Governor said “the crisis we have is the problem of not having a reliable national data bank and until we fix that, we will continue to have serious challenges managing schemes like this and dealing with smart guys who take advantage of certain gaps to perpetuate certain practices which makes management of social security very difficult.
“In other countries, if you have any transaction, the first question is what your social security number and with that your data and everything can be assessed, for all sorts of purposes. But these are huge challenges and I know that part of that we tried to address, when I was there trying an update on membership contribution.
“I imagine the challenges you are dealing with. The more products you have the bigger the challenges that arise from implementation of goals. I think one of the major problems I see is that there was not enough communication between NSITF, state and local government on the essence of this particular aspect of employee compensation”, he said.
The Governor remarked “the next point is to enlighten the state governments and unions in the public sector who are in the employment of state governments that may well substantially explain why state governments have not been very enthusiastic about the scheme.
Oshiomhole advised the NSITF to concentrate more on workers in the processing industries like the Textile, Rubber, Cement and others that are prone to serious work hazards and assured them of his support towards expanding the scope of the scheme.
Earlier, Managing Director/Chief Executive of NSITF Alhaji Umar Abubakar said they were in Edo State to update the Governor on their new products and solicit his support to woo other state governors to patronize the employees’ compensation scheme.
He said the scheme which started in July 2011 has over ten thousand employers including the Federal Government with over one million employees contributing and urged the state government to take the lead among other states of the federation.
