Labour shuts NSITF headquarters over staff ‘salary cut’
My reformation agenda fueling protests – MD
Members of the organised labour, on Friday protested and shut down the headquarters of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) over an alleged cut of workers’ salaries in the agency by the management of the organisation.
The aggrieved protesters, led by the president of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo and the chairman of the Association of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFE), NSITF branch, started their demonstration at 11am.
Armed with placards with various inscriptions, the protesters alleged that the management, being led by Mrs Maureen Allagoa, the managing director of the Fund, had made deduction of consequential taxes from their income.
But in a swift reaction, Allagoa said her insistence to reform the NSITF in line with the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu was the reason for the protest, adding that inappropriate tax deductions were inherited by the current management under her leadership.
Daily Trust Saturday reports that the agency had in the past enmeshed in different kinds of controversies, ranging from contract inflation, illegal recruitment, among others - the developments a former Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong set up a panel to investigate.
Addressing the protesters, Osifo said the protest and subsequent shutdown of the Fund became imperative after efforts made by the leadership of ASSBIFE to resolve the whole hullabaloo with the management amicably failed.
The protesters urged President Bola Tinubu to sack the managing director of the agency with immediate effect to avert the “looming crises” brewing in the Fund, while also calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) to probe previous tax deductions to the tune of N2.1 billion, which were not remitted.
But the managing director, who reacted through the spokesman of the agency, Nwachukwu Godson, said the management and the union had earlier in February reached an agreement during a social dialogue that the deduction of the taxes would take off by April.
She maintained that members of staff of the Fund do not want to pay taxes in line with the present tax regime that was supposed to be implemented in January 2024 before it was deferred, arguing that tax evasion or underpayment is a crime punishable by law.
The managing director said, “Allagoa’s insistence on reforming the NSITF is the reason for the protest. The genesis of the protest and picketing at the headquarters of the NSITF is traceable to the patriotic insistence of the NSITF management of Maureen Allagoa to reform the Fund along the 8-point agenda of the Tinubu administration.
She added, “One is that the so-called N2.1 billion tax deducted from staff emoluments did not take place under the management of Maureen Allagoa but under the former management led by Dr Michael Akabogu. Besides, the allegation is embedded in malicious falsehood.”