By Prince Kamara
Following years of engagements and recommendations by and between the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) management headed by its Director General, Mohamed Fuuad Daboh, and representatives of private sector employers and other players, NASSIT engaged journalists at a seminar to sensitize them on the progress of the proposed NASSIT Scheme for the Informal Sector.
Various speakers including the NASSIT Director General Mohamed Fuuad Daboh and representatives from affiliated MDAs are also expected to be in attendance to brief the press about their role in making the proposed NASSIT Scheme for the Informal Sector a reality and beneficial to private sector employees once it becomes law. It could be recalled that this was not the first time NASSIT engaged journalist on the proposed Scheme for Informal Sector workers. Last year, NASSIT conducted a workshop for journalists at the Galiness Hotel in Bo City to explain in detail the challenges, processes and benefits of such a scheme, taking into consideration the fact that the bulk of the work force in Sierra Leone are found tn the private sector.
It was therefore seen as beneficial to both private sector workers and the country as a whole to design a scheme which would be accepted by private sector employers, taking into consideration that most private sector employers were not members of NASSIT or paying contributions for their workers.
The objective of making it mandatory or legally binding on private sector employers to join the scheme and pay contributions for their workers is two-pronged. Firstly, it would take the burden of paying pension and making other payments to their workers who retire, or who for one reason or the other are unable to work any longer off the employers as long as they have regularly paid to the scheme contributions/subscriptions for their workers within a specified period of time.
Secondly, the government would be spared the trouble of having to deal with cases of private sector workers who after leaving work become a liability to the government when they are forced to roam the streets without any hope of receiving a befitting pension when they retire. The scheme once activated would also provide for family members and survivors of private sector workers whose contributions are up to date with the Scheme.
