Health Ministry signs pact with sector agencies on transparency, good governance

The Ministry of Health, Wednesday signed a performance contract agreement with agencies in the sector to promote transparency, accountability and good governance.

The contract gives agencies the opportunity to develop their own performance contracts with specific targets that they believe they can achieve at the end of the year.

The contracts were initialled by the various heads of agencies and board chairpersons, while the minister initialled for the ministry

“It is my hope that these contracts will guide you in the implementation of your plans, which should feed into the National Health sector goals and respond to the attainment of strategic objectives.” Health Minister Sherry Ayittey said at the signing ceremony.

According to her, the contract also provides the basics for assessing set targets and deliverables, which include programmes and projects delivery and management issues such as timely response to audit reports, human resource management to check over bloating of the payroll and adoption of measures to avoid wastage and improve productivity.

She said the health sector plays a unique and sensitive role in the socio-economic development of the nation, considering the fact that it deals with life, adding that, any negligence or inertia on the part of staff cost the nation, not only in terms of deaths, but disability and social burden on the populace.

“At the end of the year, the performance of agencies will be assessed and those who are able to achieve shall be rewarded, on the other hand, a decision shall be taken based on reasons leading to the non attainment of performance target by those unable to achieve targets”, she said.

The Minister urged all to commit to timelines and specific deliverables in the implementation of budgets and plans and also be entrusted to unity of purpose in execution of their mandates to help the nation

Dr Ebenezer Appiah Denkirah, Director of Ghana Health Service, who spoke on behalf of the group, pledged their support to help the growth of the sector by achieving their set targets.

Source: GNA