The House of Representatives Committee on Health has visited the Federal Teaching Hospital Lokoja to evaluate ongoing and completed projects.

After inspecting some of the hospital’s projects on Saturday, the House Committee on Health chairman, Amos Magaji, who led the team, said the visit was part of their constitutional mandate to perform oversight functions.

Mr Magaji noted that the lawmakers were at the hospital to evaluate projects and interface with the management on their challenges. He stressed that the objective was to ensure that high-quality work was carried out, with the ultimate goal of enhancing healthcare service delivery for the populace.

“I am here with my colleagues on over-sighting federal government health institutions. We are here to also see if the allocated and generated funds are utilised appropriately.

“We will also interact with the staff and management of the hospital to know their challenges and understand what is going on here and to ensure that healthcare delivery is optimised,” Mr Magaji said.

Mr Magaji emphasised the government’s determination to enhance the delivery of quality healthcare services to the citizenry nationwide.

At a roundtable discussion, the team urged the hospital management to furnish them with income generation details and government expenditure approvals.

The chief medical director of the FTHL, Olatunde Alabi, commended the lawmakers for the visit, describing it as timely and highly appreciated. Mr Alabi solicited the support of the National Assembly to address some major challenges facing the hospital, especially the manpower shortage, and improved budgetary allocation to the facility.

“We already have an idea of what we need and that is why we have taken them round, so they can help us in the next budgeting process to enable us complete some of the ongoing projects,” Mr Alabi said.

The representatives of the hospital’s unions appealed to the federal government to intervene and address their challenges.

According to them, these include issues like enrolment in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), wage disparities, allowances, and a shortage of manpower, especially clinical staff. 

(NAN)