ALAC-GII to tour four regions

Officials of the Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre (ALAC) of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), an affiliate of Transparency International, are touring four regions in the country.

They are Central, Upper East, Volta and Western regions.

The ALAC members are to visit selected communities to meet officials of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and its service providers for the purpose of evaluation, transparency, and validation among others.

Addressing one of such meetings at Bisease and Kumasi in the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District, Mr George Amoh, ALAC Programme Coordinator, said the tour was being sponsored by the United Nations Development programme (UNDP) and Star Ghana Limited for the period of two years.

Mr Amoh said the ALAC would put in place “Community Score Card Facilitators” who would draw an action plan, meet NHIS personnel, and service providers to educate the public on good and cordial relationship in the discharge of their duties to the benefit of the stakeholders.

At Bisease and Kumasi, the ALAC realized the following shortfalls - delay in the issuing of NHIS ID cards, limited drugs availability, lack of professional staff, charging of additional fees, poor and uncooperative attitude of staff, lack of logistics and access to laboratory, frequent referrals.

Madam Addah, Senior Programme and Research Officer of ALAC, said corruption deprived the nation of good roads, leads to poor healthcare delivery, results in poor policy formulation and fallen standard of education, among others.

The ALAC, she said, had dealt with cases such as visa fraud, unjust judiciary fines, bribery against magistrates, judges, procurement, officials of the Ghana Immigration Service, and dismissals for exposing corruption among others.