Staff nurses, midwifes, enrolled nurses and community health nurses in the Asokore Mampong Municipality are up in arms against the Municipal Health Directorate over what they complain is undue and corrupt deductions from monies allocated to a Maternal Health Child Nutrition Program (MCHNP) being run in the municipality.
The Municipal Health directorate receives quarterly financial transfers of fifty six thousand two hundred cedis (GHc 56,200) to be allocated to six zones under the municipality namely Aboabo, Sawaba, Sepe Dote, Adukrom and Asokore Mampong.
The funds are to be used by the zones for Antenatal care, health outreaches, weighing and immunization of children and growth monitoring services.
The zonal Teams are also required to do weekly and daily home visits, Community durbars and to hold quarterly Community Health Management Committee meetings with opinion leaders to assess and draw up plans for the general well being of their target groups.
Ultimatefmonline.com gathers that the program donor’s one of which is the World Bank allows the Health Directorate to retain five thousand seven hundred cedis (GHc 5,700) out of every quarterly allocation to the municipality.
It however turns out that aside this 5,700 cedis, thirty percent (30%) of the amount left to run the program is deducted by the health directorate outside the tenets of the financial allocation as this website is made to understand.
Sources suggest that the Directorate was retaining 50% until the health staff confronted officers of the municipal directorate who refused to give out the 100% allocation but only reviewed it to 30%.
This agreement was reached on condition that the Health Directorate will provide all the six zones the needed administrative support and provide them their basic requirements and consumables to run the MCHN program.
For instance one of the sub municipal districts, received eight thousand one hundred and twenty four cedis (Ghc8124) for the first quarter of 2018. After the district has taken its thirty percent (30%) share, it has been allocated five thousand six hundred and eighty six cedis (GHc5, 686).
Out of this figure, the municipal health directorate is also demanding to take a thousand cedis (GHc 1000) for purchasing family planning, vaccination and immunization records registers for the zones.
Some health providers who have been speaking to Abusua News’ Osei Kwadwo on condition of anonymity disclose that despite all these charges, the Zonal Heads are asked to append their signatures to documents that state that they receive all the hundred percent of the funds allocated for their operations.
Auditors according to credible sources from within, are either deceived to go by the signed documents or made to also enter into their records that a hundred percent of the allocations go to the rightful MCHNP zones without any deductions.
The health staff under the program are however angered with some threatening to boycott the program because the Municipal Health Directorate has failed to honour its side of the bargain in the past three years that this arrangement has persisted.
No proper structures and shelters have been provided the health staff as some of them are currently perching under trees to offer healthcare services to community members. Pregnant mothers and children.
“Imagine taking 30% from each and every sub district adding to their 5,700 and this has been happening for three good years. Auditors will come around and the officers in charge will tell us don’t tell them we are taking thirty percent and this has brought up the confusion. If it is legal, then why are you preventing us from telling the auditors that you are taking 30% from it,” a disturbed concerned staff questioned.
He added, “The district health director, the accountant and everyone is aware of what is going on.”
“Our colleagues in some of the sub districts are suffering. Some of our colleagues have been only allowed a place close to a public toilet facility to work. That is where they are providing health care. How can you provide healthcare in an unsanitary area. If they were taking the thirty percent, we were expecting them to be providing some facilities for us to work in at least a conducive atmosphere.”
“How can a nurse be working at a place without a table, without a weighing scale and still you take her Thirty Percent and you want the nurse to buy those things from the 70% she is using to run all her services under the program.”
Another staff told Reporter Osei Kwadwo we have to pay light bills for begging private hospitals to freeze our vaccines for us. We use our own transportation to even go for treated bed nets for distribution. The Municipal Health directorate does not even provide us enough Syringes and cotton for our work.
At the last quarterly Community health management meeting we did not even have money left to refresh the opinion leaders who turned up to help us with planning and discussing the progress of our work. And now they are deducting thousand cedis from my zone for register books. If they cannot help us with the 30% deduction, we are saying they should give it back to us to manage the program by ourselves.”
Ultimatefmonline.com is also picking indication that some of the disgruntled zonal heads are threatening to withhold full reports for activities they went out of their way to fund with their own money with others threatening to only execute tasks if their full allocations are duly awarded them.
This website has also stumbled on documents that suggest that the situation is not only limited to the Asokore Mampong Municipal Health Directorate but a phenomenon that is causing considerable despondency among health staff working under the MCHNP program across the country.
Response of the Asokore Mampong Health Directorate
The health directorate has admitted the thirty percent (30%) charges it is taking from the MCHP allocations contrary to the provisions laid down by the donors.
The officers of the health directorate led by the Municipal Health Director Justice Ofori Amoah will not speak on record but allow that they be quoted.
The outfit explained that the health directorate like all other health directorates across the country were starved of funds from government compelling them to depend on some of the program funds released by donors for specific programs to run all their offices and sub municipal activities.
The office also explained that the deductions which amount to some ten thousand cedis per quarter is not the only deductions that they are unfortunately compelled to deduct to save the municipal health directorates from collapse but it also extended to other donor funded programs including Tuberculosis and Malaria programs.
In relation to the MCHNP program under contention, the Asokore Mampong Municipal health director Justice Ofori Amoah further admitted that he together with his management team met the zonal heads of the program to discuss an arrangement to seed thirty percent of their allocations to the directorate to help them keep afloat to monitor the program.
He indicated that even though he abstained from the said meeting, his report was that the heads agreed without any coercion, to let the assembly have the funds even though the donors were not aware of the provision.
Mr Justice Ofori Amoah. However stated expressly that he was ready to discontinue these deductions if Government of Ghana allocations and statutory funds begun trickling in to cater for the administrative cost of the assembly.
Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Improvement Project
The objective of the Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Improvement Project for Ghana is to improve utilization of community-based health and nutrition services by women of reproductive age, especially pregnant women, and children under the age of 2 years.
There are three components to the project, the first component being community-based maternal and child health and nutrition interventions. This component focuses on strengthening supply, creating demand, and increasing ownership and accountability of district level stakeholders, outreach workers, community leaders and household members.
The component supports the uptake of a package of essential community nutrition and health actions (ECNHA) and address gaps in knowledge and community practices such as reproductive behaviour, nutritional support for pregnant women and young children, recognition of illness, home management of sick children, disease prevention and care-seeking behaviour.
The second component is the institutional strengthening capacity building, supervision, monitoring and evaluation, and project management.
Source: Ultimatefmonline.com
