No fewer than ten thousand micro, small and medium Enterprises (MSMEs) operators are expected to benefit from an ethical insurance scheme “Takaful” under the auspices of a non-governmental organisation the star Sapphire foundation.
This was disclosed by the Executive Director of the Foundation, Mr. Amu Ogbeide to newsmen during a two-day sensitisation programme by the foundation for operators of MSMEs in Abuja.
The sensitization programme, according to Ogbeide is geared towards educating small entrepreneurs on the benefits of insurance should the need arise especially in vulnerable areas especially during and after the COVID 19 era.
Ogbeide said the foundation was concerned by the vunerability of many micro business in the face of current global challenges, such as Covid-19, fire outbreak or attacks on business outfit during protest, hence the need to sensitise the operators of small scale business operators on the need to insure their businesses through micro insurance or the ethical insurance of “Takaful”.
He noted that statistics from the Bureau of Statistics (NBC) showed that 96 percent of the 37 million small and micro businesses in the country are by petty traders but lamented that these set of entrepreneurs often suffer loss whenever there is a crisis, leading to folding up of their businesses.
“We decided to organise this workshop for small business operators in the country. If your business is up to N10,000, we are inviting them to learn the act of insuring the business. Learn how to pay a token for insurance cover for a year.
“The scheme covers fire, burglary, loss during public protest e t.c. We don’t want our people out of business due to mishap. We are partnering with National Insurance Commission. We had similar workshop in Kano and we are taking it to other areas of the country.
The workshop was equally packaged to senistise the public on the ethical insurance called ‘Takaful’. Participants contribute token from their business as insurance against mishap and at the end of the year, if nothing untoward happened, certain percentage of the token contributed is paid back for reinvestment into the business.
Speaking at the workshop, the Head Micro Insurance of NAICOM, Mrs. Aisha Bashiru encouraged participants to imbibe the concept of insurance stressing that taking a policy on the micro business is a guarantee against business fold up. According to her, “micro insurance will help MSMEs get resilence during hard time.
Over 100 MSMEs in the federal capital were given free Takaful policy by the foundation at the end of the workshop.
