The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has today successfully conducted a Business Continuity Management (BCM) assessment intended to test the Fund’s ability to effectively continue operation in an event that a major disaster shuts down its systems at the head office at Workers House in Kampala.

NSSF Managing Director, Richard Byarugaba said that this is part of the Fund’s Business Continuity Management programme. “The Fund carries out comprehensive BCM test exercises to assess our capacity to effectively respond to disastrous events,’’ he said.

“One of our key strategic objectives is to ensure the safety of our member funds. We believe this objective can be jeopardized by disastrous events, which could lead to destruction of the Fund’s assets, systems, and cause injury or death to our staff and/or our customers,” Byarugaba said.

He echoed that the Fund was able to demonstrate that it can withstand any kind of disaster and continue to serve its members with minimal or no hindrance. “Although we have put in place mechanisms to ensure business continuity, we can never be sure of their effectiveness unless we put them to a test, as we have done today”, Byarugaba added.

“I am glad to report that the test was largely successful; we evacuated Workers House in record time, we safely relocated to alternate centres, and we were able to recover the systems and resume business operations within our target time lines,” Byarugaba said.

“I therefore, take this opportunity to assure our members and other stakeholders that we have adequate and effective capacity to ensure continuity of business in the event a disaster occurs that requires us to evacuate our head office”, he said.

The Fund routinely carries out stimulation exercises to prepare for possible disasters. In addition to the BCM simulations, the Fund routinely carries out fire drills in conjunction with Uganda Police at least once a year to prepare for possible fire outbreak.

The success of today’s exercise will be confirmed by an independent BCM consultant.

NSSF has a membership of over 1.6 million registered contributors and over 13,000 employers. Last month, Byarugaba told the media that the Fund’s total assets will hit 7.5 trillion by end of April this year.

The Fund’s members balance is Shs7.3 trillion, collected UGX77 billion per month in contributions and pays about Shs25billion per month as benefits to its members.