The Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Health, Ndudi Elumelu, spoke to journalists in Abakaliki on the debate on the 2012 budget and what the health sector should expect from his committee. Leo Sobechi was there. Excerpts:HOW would the House of Representatives ensure that the 2012 budget sails through without recourse to time wasting altercation with the Senate'What is left is for people to just come and do the formality of defending the budget. I do not take more than three days to do my budget. As a chairman, I look at where they are making some illegal inclusions and I remove them and put them where they are necessary. Then when they come I ask them relevant questions based on those things they fed into their budget. If they don't satisfy me, I take it to where it is needed; if they satisfy me, then I leave it there. Right now I have done my work on the budget.What measures will your committee put in place to guard against delays in project completion knowing that most often timelines are not met leading to asset depreciation'In the House of Representatives, we take pains to ascertain the level of any project that is given to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to execute. We have it in mind that Nigerians are asking for dividends of democracy and the provision of health care services is part of that. We are mindful and meticulous how our people are being treated. And the return for voting for us is all the things we are trying to give to them.Are you in Abakaliki inspecting the health facilities as part of your official oversight or personal curiosity'The law says the chairman of the committee of health is like speaker of House of Representatives. The Speaker can take five, six or seven lawmakers or even himself alone for an on the site assessment. What is important is that House of Representatives is here and I am the Chairman of the Committee on Health and will convey whatever I see to the House.In view of charges that the health sector is grossly under-funded, what measures are your committee taking to ensure that projects are not abandoned and money appropriated goes through the right channel'One of the things I discovered, as Chairman of this committee, is that even under the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, there are a lot of uncompleted projects scattered in the country. I summoned the new Executive Director to brief us on why we have so many uncompleted projects bearing in mind that he was the Special Adviser to the Director General of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG). The MDG is saddled with the responsibility of taking us to the year 2020 and all things in the MDG includes healthcare provision of water, electricity, good roads, freedom from communicable and non-communicable diseases in the year 2020. I asked him what happened because when he was in MDG most of these projects fall within what we called 'quick win.' We wanted them to facilitate the completion of those projects. I also reminded him that we had issues where contractors were given money, they mobilised to site, and then disappeared. He gave reasons and I told him that those reasons where not satisfactory and that rather than excuses, he should go back and give us a road map of how he is going to ensure that we depart from the bogey of uncompleted projects. But I must commend President Goodluck Jonathan because while submitting the 2012 budget, he made reference to uncompleted projects all over the country and that he was now geared towards ensuring that they were completed.What about the issue of non-implementation of the budget'When the President presented the budget, the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal in his address stated that we want to ensure first, that this will not be selective and secondly that the projects will be 100 per cent implemented, and where not implemented, the National Assembly has the right to know why it was not being implemented. However the Speaker noted that we would try as much as possible to see that we pass the budget in record time despite the fact that it came in late. Otherwise, there is no budget you can bring with just a few days to the end of the year and expect it to come out speedily. But we are mindful of the fact that Nigerians voted for us and that they are very impatient as they expect the promised transformation to begin to take place, and it is not forthcoming yet. So, we are going to take strict cognisance of that and ensure that we speedily pass the budget.What are your general observations on the progress of work at the new ward complex of Federal Teaching Hospital, formerly federal medical center, Abakaliki'I am impressed. The only thing that gladdens the heart of the National Assembly is to see that after appropriating money for the people that it is actually used for what it was initially meant to serve. And from what I have seen in the Federal Medical Centre, now Federal Teaching Hospital, I want to commend the Chief Medical Director, (CMD) Dr. Paul Ezeonu and his team for being committed to providing good health care delivery services to Nigerians especially Ebonyi people.
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