Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum has given the state Health Management Board (HMB) to automate its revenue system.
The governor gave the ultimatum on Thursday when he paid an inspection visit to the state specialist Hospital, Maiduguri.
Zulum noted that there are a lot leakages in the administration of revenue in the state, which he said informed his visit to the Hospital.
“Our aim is to break the pattern of underperforming revenue in our healthcare services” he said.
During his one hour visit, Zulum requested all records of revenues accrued to the Hospital, where he personally scrutinised receipts, record books and details of the Hospitals account.
He undertook an assessment of revenue generating units that include: Laboratory, ENT, Radiography and pharmacy units.
Zulum also tasked the HMB to leverage technology to improve their performance and accountability.
“To improve revenues, Hospitals must consider various strategies and leverage new technologies. Therefore, I’m giving you two weeks, the system now has to be automated. Look at our Pharmacy for example, we have available market but people are going outside to purchase drugs, it means something is wrong somewhere,” Zulum said.
“I am here to give a desired leadership, we have to ensure probity, we have to ensure accountability. I want to see an improvement of the situation, from tomorrow I want to see the statistics of revenue collected every month,” he warned.
“When I was in Ramat Polytechnic, I established a laboratory. There was a time I received 5 million as revenue in one month. I will not tolerate a situation where General Hospital cannot pay its security operatives. Government buys reagents and other materials, we have to take deliberate and drastic measures to ensure sanity in our revenue system. I wouldn’t mind injecting one billion naira to this Hospital, but there has to be sanity in the system,” Zulum said.
In another development, Governor Babagana Umara has suspended nine hospital attendants for absenteeism. The nine of them were absent and their offices locked, when Governor Zulum visited MRI/Scan section of Radiography.
“People reported as early as 6:00 am, nobody is here to attend to them. This will not be allowed to continue. I hereby suspended all of them for this gross negligence,” he said.
“Write down the names of those absentees, those that are on the pay roll but are not willing to work. Give me their details today, if they are not willing to work, we can replace them with serious people,” Zulum added.
Furthermore, Governor Babagana Umara inspected Buba Marwa Doctors Quarters, an edifice built thirty years ago. He assured of prompt government attention to rehabilitate the building.
