By Emmanuel Nduka
Nigeria’s Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folashade Yemi-Esan has reiterated statistics of the International Labour Organization (ILO) which states that up to 2.3 million men and women succumb to work-related diseases annually.
The HoS raised this alarm on Tuesday in Abuja while commissioning the Employee Wellness Centre in the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.
“According to the Organisation, this corresponds to 6,000 deaths every single day. Theavailable data also reveals that around 160 million victims of work-related illnesses are recorded annually,” she added.
This, Yemi-Esan noted, calls for greater attention to be paid to the health and safety of workers, especially “civil servants in the country who are the empirical engine of development and most critical resource of the nation”.
“The world is witnessing a great rise in work-related diseases, sudden deaths and other health challenges that impact negatively on the overall wellbeing of workers.
“For this reason, it is important to emphasize the need for every one of us to seek useful, adequate and accurate information on common health conditions and how to prevent or successfully manage them. The need to comprehensively pay attention to our health status is more crucial, especially due to the sedentary nature of our jobs as civil servants coupled with the tendency to be solely committed to the demands of office and neglecting one’s physical well-being,” she charged civil servants.
In her remarks, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, noted that the Centre is expected to promote wellness among civil servants in line with CODE III of the SDGs.
Similarly, Permanent Secretary, Service Welfare Office, Dr. Onwudiwe Maryann, expressed hope that diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, etc, which are triggered by carefree lifestyles of ageing civil servants, will be tackled by the wellness centre.
