A Ugandan mobile money agent making transactions
Health workers who participated in the polio vaccination campaign in January are yet to be paid, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the newly adopted digital payment system for campaign health workers.
With the digital system which is being mooted as the best way of remuneration for one-off projects by the World Health Organization-WHO, health workers are supposed to be paid via mobile money through phone lines registered in their names or with written consent if an alternative line is used.
Health officials in different parts of the country have complained that health workers, especially members of the Voluntary Health Teams (VHTs) that participated in the door-to-door campaign, are storming their officers and demanding their money.
Matia Lwanga Bwanika the LCV Chairperson Wakiso told URN in an earlier interview with Uganda Radio Network said that some health workers were paid and others missed out causing fears that their money could have been swindled.
In Buhweju District, Dr. Bruno Oyik, the District Health Officer told a webinar meeting organized by researchers at Makerere University School of Public Health and the University of Dakar (UCAD) on Wednesday 29th June 2022, that the problem with digital payment was that recipients don’t even know how much exactly they are supposed to receive since there are no clear guidelines to follow.
He said that extra fees apart from payments to end-users such as withdrawal charges and transport should be considered.
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Dr. Alfred Driwale who heads the Uganda Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI) said while digital payments are the way to go due to how they ease auditing, they still face wide challenges noting that for the particular polio campaign CAOs would only do transactions that don’t exceed forty million shillings per month.
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Currently, payments from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Health, those within the ministry, and local governments are all done digitally but he says payment of community health workers and others that are not on the government payroll is problematic and wastes a lot of time.
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However, it’s not clear how many health workers have been paid and how many haven’t as that question couldn’t be answered.
The Ministry is planning to use the same system in an upcoming mosquito net distribution campaign which is funded by Global Fund. In this campaign, they plan to use two VHTs in each village- Henry Katamba, Global Fund Ministry of Health Uganda
This system, experts say boosts the morale of campaign health workers because of prompt payments and the government should work to iron out the cumbersome policies that affect its effectiveness.
The system was first used here in 2017 to pay health workers involved in an Ebola campaign.
Source: story adapted from the Digital Payments for Campaign Health Workers in Sub-Saharan Africa Webinar
By Flavia Nasaka URN and Judith Grace Amoit