The sum of over N1 billion is said to be spent monthly by the Bauchi State Government in its determination to provide quality health care services to the people of the state particularly for Primary Healthcare coverage.
The disclosure was made by the State Governor, Sen Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir who also assured the government will soon absorb all the over 2000 volunteers working in the Bauchi State Primary Healthcare centers as permanent health workers in the state payroll.
Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir said that very soon the state government will free resources and employ them in order to ensure that primary healthcare services was made readily available to the people.
The Governor stated this while inspecting the Urban Maternity Health Care Center, Azare as well as other health facilities in the state while in continuation of monitoring and Inspection of all ongoing projects across the state.
Bala Mohammed said that upgrading of primary health care centers in the state is an intervention where the state government has given its counterpart funding to the development partners in order to meet the health needs of the state, particularly women and children.
The Governor said that under the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, the state government is expending more than N 1billion monthly to provide quality primary healthcare services, lamenting however that many of the permanent health staff do not turn up for work while the real workers are the volunteers.
He expressed that, “I am very happy with the volunteers here because of the work you are doing, but where are the permanent workers? It is because of manipulations, we cannot get it right. So I urge you to continue to exercise patience, very soon, we will ensure that you are fully employed.”
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The Governor added, “We are going to free resources and are going to employ those that will be employed and when we are not going to employ friends of political associates.We will put the plan that you are going to compete for the available vacancies.”
He added that, “Very soon, we want to normalize your salaries because we are eager to remove ghost workers as some people are innocently suffering. You can see under the deputy governor of the state, we are doing so much to make sure that I form a committee under him to ensure that within one month, all these issues of salaries for your workers are done.”
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He asked the Commissioner of Health to make an inventory of all the health workers that are volunteers, but noted that with the state government limited resources, the volunteers should ensure that go to school of nursing to give them an edge to secure employment.
Earlier in his address, the State Commissioner of Health, Dr Aliyu Mohammed Maigoro said that the Urban Maternity Center is one of the PHC per ward that the government promised to renovate across the 323 political wards in the state.
He, added that the Nigeria State Health Investment Project, (NSHIP) renovated 150 PHCs of the 323 wards in the state, EU-UNICEF renovated 107 PHCs, other donor partners renovated 10 PHCs while the state government has awarded the contract for the upgrading and construction of 15 PHCs in the state.
He further said that with the coming of the impact project by NSHIP, the remaining PHCs that are yet to be upgraded, will benefit from the project.
Reports from across the PHCs in the state have it that health volunteers made up of graduates of various fields of health are the ones providing services at all the PHCs and at the end of the month go home with meagre allowance as low as N3000 for unskilled volunteers while the skilled volunteers get N5000.
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