Workers Demand Vibrant Healthcare Scheme

Barely a month after the
celebration of Public Service Day, some workers in the Public Service Sector have called on the three tiers of government and the private sector to guarantee quality healthcare service scheme for workers for better performance.
The workers, who made the appeal in different interviews with The Tide in Port Harcourt, Tuesday, alleged that there is the absence of uniformity in the provision of healthcare services to workers, stating that this would reduce the productivity of workers in the affected organisations.
A federal public servant resident in the state (name with held) blamed the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), describing it as not living up to its responsibilities.
He said “we need a vibrant healthcare scheme the NHIS is fraught with many bottlenecks such as inability to register and when registration is done, the identity cards are not issued on time to the beneficiaries.  There are times when there may be need to access the scheme but what we got was obstruction.  Even some will tell us that the treatment we came for was not captured under the NHIS, so we have to pay for such services”.
He continued “we only got treatment for common malaria.  When it comes to treatment of ailments that require scanning, the hospital will be unwilling to provide the services and will refer us to other hospitals. Most annoying is that some health facilities treat NHIS enrollees with disdain or as second class patients that do not merit quality health service”.
Another worker in the private sector, Mrs Esther Itah, maintained that workers’ productivity could be affected by their mental and physical health status.
Itah, who noted that only a health person could be productive said “one of the main issues affecting the input of workers in the organisations is their health status. A sick person cannot be productive no matter how we look at it because it is like a function of a good car engine producing good mileage”.
“Where I work, there is no provision for either a clinic  or a designated hospital  for treatment but this is enjoyed by workers in other organisations. This does not show any equality among the various workers and it does encourage or boost their productivity.
Also speaking, a Human Resource Expert, Dennis Aribido, who noted that it was not an explicit law that an organisation should provide health care facilities for its workers said, however, that each organisation can make arrangement for its workers to access quality healthcare facilities as it may be convenient for it.
While noting that it was more affordable to join the NHIS which could provide for the missing link which workers are now agitating for, Aribido called on the scheme to be more accessible by workers irrespective of class saying “ I think government is now trying to make NHIS compulsory at all levels, either private or public and with this we can have a better robust provision of healthcare facilities for all workers”.

Lady Godknows Ogbalu