By MIRIAM MALAWA
SECRETARY for the National Department of Health (NDoH), Dr Osborne Liko has been put on notice for not complying with instructions from the Special Parliamentary Committee for Health Matters.
Member for Pomio Elias Kapavore issued the notice as the Chairman of the Chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Health Matters.
He raised concerns that the committee requested for a representative from the NDoH to follow them to ESP but received no response.
“It is important that when we move around like this, the key people who are in charge of the infrastructures such as the health facilities managers follow us.
“We also requested through the Health Secretary that we wanted to also have the standards technical advisors to also accompany this committee to ESP and we have not received positive response from the DoH.
“This is a parliamentary committee established by the Parliament and I want to say today that there’s an instruction going to the secretary that they must comply with instructions.
“And I want to put the secretary on notice that he must comply with directions by the committee. It is important! We are dealing with people’s lives.”
“The reasons why we are going around is to see if the PHA Act 2007 is making an impact or fully understood by the people on the ground.
“That is the reason why the DoH being the sole responsible department must accompany us, as they are in charge of policy and standards. That’s the first visit from outside the National Capital District and they’ll be more visits to other provinces,” Kapavore added.
He said one of the reasons why province are requesting the committee to visit was because they have requested for DoH but haven’t gotten any response from them.
Kapavore was speaking during a recent media conference hosted by the committee to inform the country on the committee’s findings following a recent trip to East Sepik Province (ESP).
The committee visited the provincial health authority and health facilities in the province.
