Cross River Government Extends Primary Health Workers Audit To March 2

By CrossRiverWatch Admin

The audit of Primary Health Workers in Cross River State will now conclude on Thursday, March 2, 2017 the Cross River State government says.

This was contained in a statement signed by the Director General of the Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Betta Edu and a copy made available to CrossRiverWatch Tuesday in Calabar.

The statement disclosed that the process actually ended on Friday, February 24 but was extended by two days to allow those who had issues to appear at the agency’s headquarters in Calabar for the screening and capturing of biometrics.

The process had begun February 1, at Calabar before moving to Ugep, Ikom, Ogoja and then Obudu local government areas with staff in the health and social welfare departments in the 18 local government areas of the state screened to ascertain their professionalism with a view to ascertaining the actual workforce in the Primary Health Care system.

The process backed by the World Health Organisation saw the agency’s management seize fake certificates with a representative of the Labor union present throughout to ensure the workers rights were not trampled on.

Over 2000 people were screened CrossRiverWatch gathered. But, there are over 4000 in the payroll of the government.

The need for the process according to Dr. Edu arose from the fact that the 1,013 Primary Health facilities were understaffed and warned the workers to desist from unethical practices that has led to the drop in faith by Cross Riverians on the Primary Health System.

Citing cases where she pretended to be a patient and was worked out, Betta said the process was not to witch hunt anyone but to determine the actual workforce as the state aims to achieve universal health coverage at the end of 2018.