Yieleh Chireh said he does not see any sense of urgency in the work of the Health Minister, adding that the Minister also seems not to be consulting professionals in his sector before taking major decisions leading to the numerous challenges facing the sector.

“…It doesn’t appear as if he is consulting, it doesn’t appear as if he is listening and he is too slow for the health sector in terms of what should have been done,” the Ranking Member added.

Yieleh Chireh, who is also the Member of Parliament for Wa West in the Upper West Region on the ticket of the opposition National Democratic Congress, made the observation in a Citi News interview on Tuesday in connection with the number of completed health projects that have been abandoned across the country.

Abandoned completed health projects

Citi News has in the last few days exposed a number of health projects undertaken by successive governments which cost the taxpayer several millions of dollars, but have been abandoned.

The major ones that have come up for mention are the $217 million University of Ghana Medical Centre, the Bank of  Ghana Hospital, the solar-powered medical centre at the Volo Digital Village in the Volta Region, as well as the GHc320,000 CHPS compound at Teshie which are all not in use.

With the University of Ghana Medical Centre, although the first phase has been completed, there is a tussle between the University of Ghana and the Health Ministry, as to who to manage the facility, with government saying it needs an additional $6 million to make it operational.

With regards to the Bank of Ghana Hospital, the Board is yet to take a decision on what module of management to adopt, although the facility was built in three years and largely completed in 2017.

In the case of the Volo Medical Centre, health professionals are unwilling to work there due to the lack of staff accommodation as well as the location of the facility.

Stop doing politics

Yieleh Chiereh in the interview with Citi News’ Parliamentary correspondent, Duke Mensah Opoku, further accused the Heath Minister of politicizing the issues in the health sector, hence their difficulty in addressing them.

“I have restrained myself from condemning people from the beginning; less than one year, but after one year there is no excuse at all. If you listen to the Minister of Health, he just didn’t want to take a decision to give credence to what has been done by the previous government. So when you politicize health then we have a problem.”

“Everything he has said is always political and it is not good for the country. He should engage and listen to the advice of this technical people – he is not a health person, he is an accountant and everybody will respect him if he does that,” Yieleh Chireh added.

We’ll summon officials over ‘abandoned’ health facilities

On the abandoned health projects, the ranking member hinted of moves to haul before Parliament heads of sector agencies that undertook various health projects, completed them, but have not opened them to the public.

Yieleh Chireh said his Committee will surely enquire from the sector departments the reason why these facilities are not in use.

“I have the duty to invite them to parliament; the committee will work on all these things. The controversies you have heard, the committee would have to call the various heads of departments to appear before the committee to find out what is the real issue,” he added.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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The Health Minister, who supervised the much-criticized ceremony to officially announce the restoration of the allowance, said the allowances will ease financial burden on them and their families.

At a ceremony to celebrate the restoration of the allowance, the nurses who were introduced to the gathering to testify receipt of their allowances for the month, said they were overwhelmed with joy.

“We thank the President for giving us our allowance. We were hoping, but now we have it,” one of the trainee nurses said.

“I want to say thank you to His Excellency. This is going to lessen the financial burden on our parents, and it’s going to help in our education as well,” another said.

The previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, scrapped the GHC 450 per quarter allowance for trainee nurses in 2013.

It explained that it canceled the regular payments because it prevented the state from investing in infrastructure to admit more students.

President Akufo-Addo, however after winning the December 2016 elections, gave assurances that government would restore the allowances.

Addressing over 1,000 trainee nurses, traditional leaders and some state officials at the launch of the restoration of the allowance, President Akufo-Addo said a total of GHC232 million had been committed by the government for this academic year’s payment.

“For the 2017/2018 academic year, effective September 2017, 58,000 health trainees comprising nurses and midwives, will be paid GH¢400 per person for each of the 10 months of the academic year. This means the government will be spending a total of GH¢ 232 million for this academic year.”

He further gave assurances that the government will be able to sustain the programme.

“To the professional cynics and skeptics, those who have made an industry out of constantly asking if this policy is sustainable, I wish to assure them that with the proper management of public finances, the nation’s budget can accommodate such an amount,” Akufo-Addo said.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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According to him, the proposal had a clear roadmap to paying the debt or reducing it to the barest minimum.

“…We were aware of the debt that was going to come, we were aware of the payments and we had a formula and system to deal with. But unfortunately there was a change of government and they [NPP] made all manner of promises that they had clear plan to deal with it. The question now is that what is the plan for the current government?”

[contextly_sidebar id=”CrNmj3qNeBAXQWkLzJMicbjbcZu1kEEG”]Mr. Segbefia made the remark on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday in relation to a claim by the current Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu who complained that the NPP government is struggling to clear the over GHc100 million debt left by the Mahama-government in the sector.

“…The bottom line is that the previous government has committed debts not in the Ministry of Finance, just Ministry of Health…There is a debt overhang of close to about 134 million Ghana cedis as at the end of December 2016…The little goods and services that we got this year, we had to pay out of 53 million, 43 million to ensure that we pay for co funding to give us vaccines so that is the grim situation,” the Minister said.

But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Segbefia said the NDC government envisioned the debt and strategized on how to deal with it.

The former Health Minister explained that during their time in power, the NDC government made ten percent of total NHIA allocation to the Health Ministry for the clearing of debts of essential vaccines and other commitments.

He added that the NDC government also decided to make some allocations from the petroleum levy to support the NHIA to bridge it funding gap but could not implement it because they were kicked out of power.

“The way we got round this was that when the NHIA pay, ten percent of the amount paid to the NHIA is made available to the ministry to deal with issues such as this. And so we had put in place a system whereby funding for payment of essential vaccines were to come from allocations which was given to NHIA.”

He said they realized that “if we got all the money, because of the increased uses of the NHIA, all the monies that were coming from the formula we would still have a funding gap or shortage within then NHIA.”

“It is for this reason that the NDC-led administration decided and you heard it in our manifesto that we were going to take money from the petroleum levy to add to the existing NHIA bill which would have also increased the ten percent that was supposed to given and would deal with this payment that we have make for the essential drugs and also give the NHIA the extra funding that it requires,” he added.

He however called on the current Minister to implement the proposal or better still implement recommendations from a report commissioned by the Mahama government into the NHIA on how to increase its revenue.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post We had a plan to clear GHc100m NHIS debt – Alex Segbefia appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Speaking in his role as Chair of the PCB for 2017, the Minister of Health of Ghana, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, said, “Through our pledge we demonstrate our willingness to contribute to the fight against the disease.”

The contribution makes Ghana one of the leading African donors to UNAIDS and follows recent commitments on funding for UNAIDS by other African countries. On becoming the Chair of the PCB earlier in 2017, Mr Agyeman-Manu stressed that Ghana would work closely with UNAIDS to achieve the collective goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

The Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé thanked Ghana for its pledge. “Ghana’s pledge of US$ 200 000 for UNAIDS is another example of Africa increasing its investment in the AIDS response,” he said. “Shared responsibility is vital if the world is to meet its commitments to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030,” he added.

About UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Source: UNAIDS

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The court presided over by Justice LL Mensah said the Ministry’s failure to pay statutory funds into the GETFund was illegal.

The court also held that the applicant, Richard Nyamah had capacity to bring the application contrary to the argument by the Attorney General (AG) that he had no personal interest.

Mr. Nyamah filed an Ex-parte motion in 2013 praying the Court to compel the Finance Ministry to pay the outstanding money into the GETFund as required by law.

According to him, the Ministry owes the GETFund approximately GHC 687 million.

The debt, he says, has halted the GETFund’s infrastructural development plans and other projects it intended to embark on.

Speaking to Citi News, Mr. Nyamah said the court’s ruling signifies victory for Ghanaians.

“It is victory for Ghanaians as a whole and I don’t take this as my personal victory because the GETFund cuts across from the tertiary level to the primary level,” he said.

Meanwhile, lead counsel for Richard Nyamah, Sean Opoku, told Citi News, he will file another motion to seek for a definite time line for which the Ministry must make the payment.

According to him, the Court only instructed the Ministry to pay the debt but failed to give a definite time for the payment to be made.

The GETFund is a public trust set up by an Act of Parliament in 2000 with the core mandate of providing funding to supplement government effort in the provision of infrastructure and facilities within the public sector from the pre-tertiary to tertiary level.

It also provides funding to support the procurement of education equipment and promotion of staff development and research especially at the tertiary level.

However, GETFund is among the many statutory organizations owed by the government.

By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Pay all outstanding arrears owed GETFund – Court orders Finance Ministry appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Some social commentators and Civil Society Organization (CSOs) have raised serious concerns over the composition of the technical committee which was set up by government.

It was made up of representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the GRA, the National Communications Authority (NCA), the Attorney General (AG) and Subah Info-Solutions.

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) says the institutions represented on the committee were one way or the other, linked to the case, therefore, their findings and recommendations cannot be trusted.

The chairman, Dr. Edward Siaw on Eyewitness News insisted “it is not a sham, we did a professional job and when the report went, it was looked at, it was referred to other government agencies and then government accepted it.”

He also denied reports that Subah had a representation on the committee explaining that, the three representatives from Subah only sat in the committee’s meetings during the re-negotiating of the contract between Subah and the GRA.

“They were party to the contract so that is when they came but on the other issues, like the validity of the contract, they were not part,” he clarified.

He stressed that it was imperative for the representatives of Subah to be present at the re-negotiating of the contract and therefore, there is no case of conflict of interest.

Mr. Siaw admitted working closely with the GRA through the Finance Ministry as a Tax Policy Consultant but vehemently denied any case of another conflict of interest in the investigations of the technical committee.

“I can assure you, I am a professional and I know what a conflict is and what is not a conflict,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mary Adams of the GII observed that despite the explanations being given by Mr. Siaw, “there is a case of serious conflict of interest in connection with the chairperson of the committee.”

She called for the setting up of a new committee to conduct another investigation into the Subah-GRA deal “so that we will get better results because, what we fed into the system is what we got back.”

According to her, Ghana is having serious challenges in dealing with matters of corruption “and so if we have had the opportunity and government is supposed to show commitment, we believe this is not the right way at all.”

Background

In November 2013, government constituted a technical committee to investigate a contract agreement between the GRA and Subah Info-solutions after news broke that the GRA had paid huge amounts of money to Subah for no work done.

Subah was contracted by the GRA to electronically monitor domestic call data records (CDRs) of the telecommunication companies in the country to enable the GRA collect appropriate taxes from the telcom companies.

The technical committee was to review and renegotiate the service agreement between the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) and Subah Info-solution.

The committee’s report on the matter described the Subah-GRA contract as valid and can herefore, not be set aside.

The report also discounted earlier claims that the GRA paid GHC 144 million to Subah for services rendered within three years but clarified that an amount of GHC 74 million was rather paid.

But there is widespread dissatisfaction with the work of the committee.

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan

 

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