‘Midwife Scheme Still Functional In S’South’

The South-South Zonal
Coordinator of The National Primary Health Care Development Agency APHCDA, Dr Joseph Oteri, has said that the Midwife Service Scheme (MSS) was still on-going in the zone.
Oteri disclosed this during an interview with newsmen in Benin.
He said that in spite of the fact that the midwives in the scheme were owed about eight months salary, the programme was still on-going.
“The MSS is still on, even though we owe the midwives about eight months salaries; we have not asked them to stop work.
“We have not been able to pay them due to dwindling economic situation in the country.
“We are appealing to them to hang on to the new government and hopefully it will think of how to settle their salaries.
“Grant from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) programme was being used to pay the MSS workers, but since MDG is meant to end in 2015, a lot of things are currently winding down.’’
The zonal coordinator said that the issue was not peculiar to the zone but across the country and that government had been told to source for money to pay the midwives.
He, however, said that health workers under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme-Maternal and Child Health Programme (SURE-P-MCH) had been asked to stop work.
He said “we are trying to wind down the SURE-P-MCH activities because we don’t know the direction of the new government.
“We have asked the health workers under the scheme to stay off, so that they don’t go through what the MSS workers are going through.
“We paid them up until April this year and asked them to stop work and wait for directive from the new government; if the government says it will continue, they will be asked to come back.’’