Funding health sector in 2019: Gombe commissioner tasks MDAs to pursue prompt releases

GOVERNMENT Ministries, Departments and Agencies in Gombe state have been tasked on the need to vigorously exhaust all avenues of ensuring that there are prompt releases for the implementation of their various programmes and activities as government strives to fully implement 2019.

Gombe State Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Malam Hassan Muhammadu made the call on Thursday during the 2019 budget breakdown when he was asked why these sectors suffered lack of releases of funds despite Government budgetary approvals while lack of funds has always been attributed to non-release of the funds by some high Government functionaries.

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According to him, these MDAs have to plan, create projects and activities and exhaustively follow all the bureaucracies to the later before releases could be made declaring that if memos were made and pursued halfway, releases would not be possible.

The Commissioner also said that, Government plans to create separate funds that will be used in funding critical situations in the health sector due to its importance even though the health sector has only 9 per cent of the total budget of the State for the 2019 fiscal year.

He also tasked Civil Society Organization (CSOs) to work closely with the MDAs in an effort to achieve the desired goal of providing the desired push.

While speaking over the rising cases of Malnutrition in the state, Hassan Muhammadu explained that malnutrition has become a national problem and that considering the enormity of the problem, the Federal Government needs to intervene in and treat it as a national emergency.

The state health sector is made up of the Ministry of Health, Primary Healthcare Development Agency, College of Nursing, Gombe Traditional Medicine Board, College of Health Technology all with a total recurrent allocation of N6,338,382,000,00 and capital expenditure of the sum of N4,254,900,000.00 totaling N10,593,282,000.00 of the budget size for the 2019 fiscal year.