The Minority in Parliament has criticised the National Health Insurance Authority’s (NHIA) planned allocation of GH₵245 million for the procurement of Ghana Cards for children aged six to 14.
The Authority has justified cards for this age bracket would do away with the printing of separate health insurance cards.
However, former Minority Leader and Tamale South Member of Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu says the decision is reckless.
In Parliament on Friday, Mr Iddrisu stated payment of service providers’ claims must be a priority of NHIA and not otherwise.
“We need more answers from the National Identification Authority and the Health Insurance. I do not think that this State’s resources is being spent well,” Mr Iddrisu said.
Minority Chief Whip, Kwame Governs Agbodza, who shared similar concerns bemoaned NHIA has failed to comply with demands for independent audits.
The Adaklu MP therefore called for a parliamentary audit into what he called the NHIA’s significant spending on ICT-related expenses.
He expressed concern over the allocation of nearly one billion Ghana cedis towards ICT-related projects.
He listed various expenditures such as the claims processing centre, biometric ID cards authentication system, management information system, telecare service platform, and claims data capture.
“Mr Speaker, even the Ministry of Communication, how much money do they spend on ICT and other things? Mr Speaker, this is not the first time we requested that the NHIS should conduct an independent audit of the system and report to Parliament.
“As we speak, they have failed to do the audit and furnish Parliament so we are saying Parliament should institute its own audit into this,” he said.
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