By CrossRiverWatch Admin
The Cross River State Government has announced the formation of a committee to investigate 54 staff in its primary health care sector for alleged absenteeism, gross misconduct and extortion of the public while rendering health services to them.
A statement issued by the Primary Health Care Development Agency quotes the Director General, Dr. Betta Edu as saying that committee was set up to checkmate workers and punish offenders to serve as deterrence to other staff who want to follow their path.
“One of the issues in service delivery at the primary healthcare level is staff absenteeism, reporting late to duty, locking up facilities and collecting monies under the table by charging public for services that is supposed to be free,” Edu said.
She said that the prompt payment of salaries and rural allowance by the current administration was to prevent sharp practices and maintained that the agency is, “looking into improving their integrated supportive supervision for staff to ensure that facilities are open when due even as the agency is relying on leaders or members of the communities to report erring health workers for sanction and necessary disciplinary actions.”
The committee is chaired by the Senior Special Assistant primary healthcare, Mr. Joseph Idiege who was quoted as saying that, “healthcare delivery deserves the greatest attention and that is why concerted efforts is being made by the agency not only to identify areas of weakness of the health workers but also exploring vigorous measures to make service delivery a truly enduring and supportive venture which will help drive the revitalisation agenda.”
On the allegations, Mr. Idiege averred that: “Some staff connived, contrived and collaborated with one Resonance Medical Team (RMT) to illegally extort monies from unsuspecting members of the public in the health facility,” even as he assured that, “erring staff will be punished and possibly posted out to another health facility in order to restore quality services in their present centers.”
Other members of the committee are the director of finance in the agency, Tiku Takim; a representative from the planning, research and statistics unit, Mr. Ekereke Augustine; director of primary healthcare, Dr. Onebieni Ana; director of administration, Pastor Efiom Daniel and Mr. Ojah Joseph.
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