News:
March 22, 2018
Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu, has call on government to exempt the National Health Insurance Funds from the list of statutory funds that are being capped to avoid it suffering reduction.
The Earmarked Funds Capping and Realignment Act passed in 2017, stipulates that all allocations to the eight statutory funds must not exceed 25 percent of all government revenue.
But the Minority believes this must change, especially for the health sector.
Speaking ahead of the approval of over GHc2.3 billion Ghana cedis for the National Health Insurance Authority for 2018, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, said “if the Ministry of Finance wants to cap [funds], cap other areas. You can cap the Common Fund. You can cap the GETFund as you have done. But for health insurance, no.”
“Many of these allocations are for IT infrastructure. Every year, we are dedicating money for IT infrastructure and its improvement. We need to see a stop,” he added.
When the Earmarked Funds Capping and Realignment Act was passed in March 2017, it was met with some criticism from the minority.
The Deputy Minority Leader, James Avedzi, argued that the move will affect the operations of local assemblies with the reduction in allocations from 7.5 to 5 percent.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com