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Dying on the job – Latest Nigeria News, Nigerian Newspapers, Politics

Amid concerns by experts, industrial accidents resulting in deaths or injuries, including the loss of arms and fingers, is on the rise with little or no compensation for hapless victims, writes Kunle Akinrinade.

 

IT was a tragic afternoon on November 22, 2019 at Landcraft Industry Nigeria Limited in Ikorodu, Lagos. A 50-year-old employee of the company, Sunday Usenobong, died after he allegedly slipped and fell into a melting pot while operating the company’s moulding machine.

His death came two days after a 35-year-old man, Olatunde Femi, died after he got his head trapped while operating a moulding machine at Multipak Nigeria Limited, situated at Plot F28, Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Ikeja.

A similar fate befell 14-year-old Joseph Ekwenobe in June 2018 as he got electrocuted while working on a casual basis at Cheng-Fa Nigeria Limited, a footwear company in Ikeja, Lagos. The teenager, who was placed on a daily wage of N700, died from the incident.

Many other workers have cheated death but only survived with permanent disabilities. One of them is Anthony Effiong, an orphan.

The indigene of Akwa Ibom State had no one to help him actualise his dream of returning to school to further his education.

To actualise his dream, therefore, the 23-year-old school leaver sought employment at KGEM Manufacturing Limited, a plastic manufacturing company located in Isolo area of Lagos.

Effiong had planned to save a part of his meagre salary as a casual worker to sponsor himself through school. Sadly, his dream collapsed like a pack of cards on October 26, 2016.

Effiong had barely started work when his immediate boss, an Indian national, increased the speed of the machine he was operating in an unusual manner.

The machine malfunctioned and severely lacerated Effiong’s right hand. The badly damaged hand was subsequently amputated on doctors’ advice.

Effiong believes that he would not have lost his hand if he had been rushed to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, immediately the accident occurred. He, however, said the company’s management did not act on time.

‘I lost my right hand to a malfunctioning machine’

 

He said he had been redeployed from the assembly unit to the moulding section a few weeks after he was employed without any adequate training as required by labour regulations.

He said: “At that stage, I wanted to approach one of the management staff to plead with him to redeploy me back to the assemblage department, but I was advised by my colleagues that such a request would be treated by the Indian overlords as a taboo, and the consequence would be a sack,” said Effiong whose hand was subsequently amputated on doctors’ advice.

Effiong’s pathetic case echoed in the plight of Daniel Adoga, who also had the misfortune of losing his right hand while he was operating a grinding machine at a plastic factory in 2004.

Recalling the incident, Adoga said: “I was on night duty and we were putting rubber in the machine. The machine had cut off my hand before I knew it.

I am a family man with a wife and children. I go through considerable difficulties to feed my family. I have had to farm with one hand.

“Several other workers had previously been injured by the same machine. We told the factory owners that the machine was dangerous but they did not take any action. The machine is still there as I speak and there are no protective kits to guard against injuries.”

 

Other severe cases

Life will never be the same again for Amuta Friday. His once bubbling mood has taken a descent into despair since he lost his manhood after stepping on a slippery floor with his testicles crashing into a sharp object while he was working at an engineering company on the outskirts of Lagos a few years ago.

Despite a year-long treatment and series of surgery he underwent at LASUTH, Amuta is today impotent and unmarried.

Recalling the incident, he said: “I slipped and fell, crashing my penis and testicles against a sharp object. I started bleeding profusely.

“Even now, I know that my body has lost something precious. It would have been better if it happened while I was a child. My father gave birth to me and he expects me to give birth to my own children. Unfortunately, I cannot.”

 

Why workplace accidents are prevalent

Most companies in Nigeria, especially in the manufacturing sector, pay lip service to adequate provision of safety measures and training of employees on the necessary precautions to safeguard them in the work environment.

The major culprits are companies established by Asian entrepreneurs in the country, many of whom have been indicted for having scanty regards for the health and safety of workers at their factories.

This was the case with Ekwenobe’s death at Cheng-Fa, which prompted the Lagos State Safety Commission to seal off the company after the safety agency found that the footwear firm compromised acceptable safety standards and its factory was not safe and conducive for workers.

Following investigations carried out at the factory, the agency also said there was exposure of electrical wires, non-provision of safety signage, lack of standard chairs, absence of standard toilets, lack of protective wears at the factory, unsafe stacking of goods and overcrowding, among others.

Apart from flouting labour laws by engaging teenagers as workers for long hours with meagre wages, the then Director-General of safety commission, Lanre Mojola, said “it was also stated that the access routes are not clearly demarcated. As a matter of fact, the company’s entire safety management protocol is allegedly poor.

“A representative of the commission had asked the company to provide their emergency kit but unfortunately, they couldn’t provide any.

In response, the company’s lawyer stated that they are in partnership with the General Hospital located around the area where the workers are normally sent to when they fall sick.”

It was said that Multipak Nigeria Limited where Olatunde died also committed safety infractions and disregard for protection of workers at the factory. It was alleged that the company had been sealed off after the accident.

Mojola said: ”The Chinese company will not be reopened until all the safety measures are adequately met.

Had the company observed laid-down safety guidelines, put up signs and ensured proper housekeeping, Olatunde’s death would have been avoided.

Poor compensation for injured workers

The injury rate is very high in the manufacturing sector where most industrial accidents occur while the victims are operating machines.

In Nigeria, there is no adequate compensation and provision for workers who suffer disability on active duty. Although employers of labour in public and private sectors are to defray the medical bill of injured workers from a dedicated sum based on the salary of workers, there has not been strong compliance with the regulation or policy

The plight of casual workers, worsened by their lack of gainful employment, robs them of any claim or compensation from their employers for workplace injuries.

In the case of Effiong, it was said that his employers failed to honour its promise to compensate him for his permanent injury.

His brother, Okon said: “Why didn’t they take Effiong to a government-owned hospital? They should be made to pay dearly for their outright negligence.”

For his injuries which led to the loss of his manhood, Amuta got a meagre 150 dollars as compensation. The pitiful sum is like adding insult to injury.

Sometime in 2015, three workers of a Lagos-based company, African Steel Mills, Ifeanyi Okoro, Monday Abah and James Nuekwu, in separate suits filed at the National Industrial Court in Lagos, hinged their permanent bodily injuries on the lack of safety devices at the company.

Okoro’s (a crane operator) left leg had been amputated, Abah, a furnace operator, lost three fingers while Nuekwu claimed he suffered a third degree burn on his left leg which required skin grafting surgery.

The trio sought N25m, N20m and N30m respectively as insurance claim and special and general damages.

At the end of the legal tussle, the company and the litigants adopted an amicable settlement out of court. But what the company paid the trio as compensation was a far cry from the sums they demanded.

Okoro, was paid a sum of N2 million instead of N10m he demanded for the amputation of his left leg, Abah got N1.2m compensation for the three fingers he lost while Nuekwu was paid N800, 000 for the burns he suffered at work.

 

Weak regulations, enforcement

A labour law expert, Joseph Iruobe, said that most of the victims who are subjected to harsh working conditions and are denied adequate compensation for workplace injuries are casual workers, whose existence is extraneous to labour regulations in the country.

“There are laws which safeguard or protect workers in the country from poor pay and hazards on duty, which extends to compensation for permanent injuries.

One of them is the Workmen’s Compensation Act, but casual workers who suffer injuries on duty are not covered by the law because they are not categorised as bonafide workers,” Iruobe said.

He noted that the regulation frowns at prolonged casualization, adding that ”This is why the Act mandated companies must regularise casual workers as bonafide staff

”However, many employers flout the law by hiring and firing casual workers within three months and re-engaging them for another three months to perpetuate their status as casuals.”

In a recent interview, an expert in Labour Law, Femi Aborisade, said despite the fact that the Employee’s Compensation Act offers better protection to Nigerian workers than the repealed Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1987, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Aborisade said, “The rates of compensation are higher under the Employee’s Compensation Act. There is a kind of calculation that is done depending on the kind of injury sustained.

Though in my point of view it is still poor but it is better than what was obtainable under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. It is not good enough, but there is a slight improvement.”

Aborisade said given any opportunity, the Employee’s Compensation Act is due for an amendment, adding that “I have a booklet on it and I have advocated an amendment of various aspect of the Act.”

 

Way forward

An industrial safety expert, Anyanwu Chidiebere, recently noted that although industrial injuries have been taken care by certain laws in the country, he said that the relevant laws have been flagrantly breached by employers.

“The issue of compensation for industrial injuries, Nigeria has addressed it. Nigeria has passed the level where if your hand is amputated as a result of industrial accident, you will ask the company to compensate you.

Nigeria has enacted the Employees Compensation Act and the National Social Insurance Trust Fund. If your hand is cut off, you can benefit from the fund but the issue is that the company is supposed to have registered every of its workers in line with the ECA Act with the National Social Insurance Trust Fund but many companies are failing in this duty, which is a breach of the law for which companies can be shut down by the National Assembly in the performance of its oversight function.”

“There are several breaches in the industries. And it is not only the multinational companies that kill and maim Nigerians; we also have indigenous companies in the country.

Some of them do not have signboards, they keep maiming citizens in their factories and everyday we have records of such victims and we cry out.

“These companies have breached all the laws of the federation. But you asked what our council is doing to stop the maiming in the industries.

One of the steps that we have taken is that we have listed a lot of companies and taken them before the National Assembly and addressed it to the Senate on the 10th of December 2015.

Now the question is: between then and now, what has the Senate done? The Senate has not done anything.

The question is: why can’t the Senate carry out its responsibility to stand up and defend Nigerians who are dying in the industries?

I have presented the report to them so that they can carry out their oversight function, but I have neither seen nor heard that the Senate is doing anything about it.”

He added: “The issue is that many of these companies have not complied with the provisions of the Factory Act 2014 and the only way that we (council) can exercise our power under democracy is by cautioning them and reporting them to the National Assembly, which has the overriding powers to, as lawmakers, see where and how industries in the country are breaching the laws in line with their oversight functions. But the Senate has not performed that oversight function.”

A labour rights activist, Boniface Nwachukwu urge the relevant trade unions to rejig their engagement machinery to tackle the neglect suffer by victims of industrial accidents, noting that” the fight for adequate compensation for victims of occupational accidents should not be left for the victims and their lawyers alone.

”The relevant trade unions should step in by engaging and demanding from any employer whose workers might have been injured adequate compensation to take care of both the physical and emotional trauma or loss of the victims.’’

Source: thenationonlineng.net