Senate Committee on Health on Wednesday expressed discontent over 2017 Budget presentation by Committee of Chief Medical Directors of Federal Medical Centre from 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
Led by Dr. Abdullahi Ibrahim, the Medical Directors complained of paucity of funds, a situation that hampers their services, while calling for increased funding of medicals services across the country.
They pointed out that high electricity tariff by Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission was negatively affecting their funds, noting that funds that would have been used as medical services go for electricity tariff.
Reacting to the presentation, a member of the Senate on Health, Senator Matthew Urhoghide sought to know reasons that the Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) and budget performance for 2016 was not shown.
“CMDs, from your documents which you want the Senate to work on did not show your IGR, and budget performance and you this is at the backdrop of 100% 2016 Capital releases”, he asked.
“Moreso, the column for the budget performance was blank and we don’t know reasons behind hiding those vital information”, Urhoghide added.
He frowned at the manner government institutions were being managed, while asking that if it were their private medical centres, would they be running it at a loss as is this case.
Meanwhile, Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Lanre Tejuosho pointed that the budget documents were poorly and ill-prepared. He advised them to get serious with government business.
“From your documents, it shows you people are not ready. Besides, most of you presented your documents late which we did not have time to peruse before now,” he maintained.
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