Flexing of muscles and showmanship at Ablekuma NHIS office
Adom FM’s Afia Pokua and her news team’s barbaric encounter with the Manager of the Ablekuma National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) last Thursday must be condemned outright.
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Not only is it an attack on press freedom, but also it is definitely a mark of intolerance, an unacceptable characteristic of a public officer whose duty is to serve. Showmanship in a public office belongs to the days of dictatorship.
The Ablekuma NHIS office is on my daily route, except for the odd days when I have to use the George Bush Highway. It is my local NHIS office and I have used it for close to six years; registering and renewing my household’s NHIS cards and mine. So, when earlier this year, I started seeing crowds and never-ending queues at odd times of the day, sometimes in the sun, I wondered what was going on there.
Then a shelter was put up in the open space in front of the office and benches put there for people to sit on them.
The crowd doubled and even tripled when schools went on vacation in July. Late in the evenings, one would see nursing mothers, young children and the elderly among the crowds still waiting to be attended to.
As my curiosity piqued, I stopped at the office some five weeks ago to investigate. I was not successful as I was told that the person who could talk to me was not in the office.
I tried again just three weeks ago and got the same answers. Regrettably, on both occasions, I saw the showmanship and the raised shoulders of officers whose duty was to serve speedily and with a smile the people who had come showing some confidence and wanting to be part of the scheme.
If indeed Afia Pokua and her team at Adom had not done it, I certainly was going to take on that investigation because I saw that it was time help came to the NHIS clients who continued to spend days in the queues there merely for a biometric card.
I had not even imagined the deep woes of the clients who trooped to the office every day until when I realised I needed to renew the cards of some members of my household. So on Friday, August 29, I asked my driver to take my two wards to that same NHIS office to renew their cards.
They got home shortly after 4p.m. without the biometric cards after queuing for eight hours. They were asked to come back on Tuesday, September 2, for their pictures to be taken. That day, they did not get home until 11.30pm. This was after 15 hours of waiting for their pictures and cards to be issued to them.
What is the justification for wasting man-hours? How are people expected to get home at 11.30pm and beyond when no public transport is working? We create more confusion when we are engulfed in self-imposed chaos.
From the experience of my wards, who recounted their 15-hour ordeal to me, and from what I witnessed on both occasions when I stopped by to talk to someone, Adom FM did what others had not done by highlighting the plight of people who just wanted to join the national health scheme.
Unfortunately, someone saw their attempt as an invasion, forgetting that no one has the right to dehumanise fellow human beings either by commission or omission.
If one has to wait for over 20 hours in a queue merely to renew a health insurance card, then there must be something wrong somewhere. That wrong is the inefficiencies the office continues to display, which they did not want the media to expose.
It is time for people in public offices to realise that their duty is not to lord it over people but to serve them.
After nearly four months or so of issuing the biometric cards, the Ablekuma NHIS office should have known the magnitude of the task and accordingly devised creative ways of reducing the hardships of the same people they were mandated to serve.
In any case, why do we have to go through all these merely to acquire a piece of card that says that you are who you are in order to access medical care? Don’t we have sufficient data on our voter and national IDs?
These can be used. All that would be required then is a specific mechanism to be put in place for those who do not qualify for either of both forms of ID. Simplification is healthy and less costly.
Writer's email: [email protected]
