Africa-Press – Tanzania. MINISTER of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Labor, Employment, Youth and the Disabled), Prof Joyce Ndalichako, has challenged the Workers Compensation Fund (WCF) to ensure that more workers register with it and benefit from compensations upon accidents at workplaces.
Prof Ndalichako further encouraged employees in both private and public institutions to register and become members of the Fund.
The minister made the plea when she visited the office of the WCF in Dar es Salaam, on Monday.
“For the past six years since its establishment, the Fund has managed to register only 2680 workers, this is not enough because the Fund has many benefits for employees, so you need to work harder and put more effort to ensure that this year more workers are registered,” Prof Ndalichako said.
However, she was pleased with the good work done by staff of the WCF, saying they were well organized in providing appropriate compensations to the workers upon disasters.
For instance, she said the IT unit of the Fund has done a good job since all systems used to receive and process documents for compensation payments have been developed by young people working with the Fund, something which shows that Tanzanians have great potential to do great things in the ICT sector.
“This system has been working very well in providing services to employees,” said Ndalichako.
To ensure the Fund grows more, the minister directed the management to focus more on providing education over its benefits to employees since one of the biggest challenges leading to low registration of workers with the Fund was lack of awareness among employees.
For his part, Director General of the WCF, Dr John Mduma said despite the fact that the institution was still young, it significantly differs from other institutions in provision of compensation to employees.
Furthermore, Dr Mduma said WCF was more focused on looking at workers’ interests before and after disasters as opposed to negative perception by some people against the Fund.
Dr Mduma also appealed to the government through the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Youth and the Disabled to assist the WCF open its office in each region so that it can reach more workers easily.
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