Stakeholders in the health sector in Kano state on Thursday met to deliberate on the proposed provisions for the sector in the 2023 budget of the state.
At a town hall meeting organised by Development Research and Project Centre (dRPC) and Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale (PACFah@Scale) in Kano on, the stakeholders also expressed concern over the slow status of implementation of the 2022 budget on health in Kano state with only 24.7 per cent of the budget being implemented as at the end of the second quarter of the fiscal year.
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Although the state has been able to surpass the recommended 15 per cent appropriation for the the health sector, but only about N8.3bn of about N34bn allocated is released in the period under review.
Malam Salisu Yusuf of the Kano Budget Working Group, a coalition of Civil Society Organizations in the state, disclosed this at the town hall meeting.
According to him, “The major concern here is, if your percentage is very poor, then the service delivery will also be very poor. But, seeing this percentage, it is not appreciable and the services are not improving and we are already in the last quarter of the year.”
But, the Director of Planning in the state’s Ministry of Planning and Budget,
Dalhatu Danladi, said the state has over recent years been able to allocate beyond the recommended 15 percent of its budget.
He also said the performance level is not unconnected to the shortfall in the state’s subvention of IGR and federal allocation, adding that it is expected to improve significantly before the year ends.
Earlier, the Executive Director of the coalition in the state, Hajiya Halima Ben Umar, said the main objective of the meeting was to bring health committees of all the five emirates in the state due to their proximity with the people, CSOs, government and other relevant stakeholders in the sector so as to improve its budgetary process.
She explained that, “The essence is for the [Kano] State House of Assembly members to see the need and priority of the emirates so that they will be able to help when it comes to putting it into the budget.
“We are saying there should be more funds in the budget, and luckily Kano has tried, because 15 percent of the budget is recommended for health in the Abuja declaration, but the state has gone beyond that, which is very good. But, the main challenge is the release of the funds, not the allocation.
“It is our hope that all what the people say is included in the 2023 appropriation that will soon be presented,” Ben Umar added.
On his part, the Dankadai of Kano and Chairman, Kano Emirate Council Committee on Health, Dr Bashir Muhammad, said the emirates have 13-member health committees in all the over 7,600 traditional wards of the state, who convey health messages to all the nooks and crannies of the state.
Daily Trust reported that the state has allocated N33,999,653,517.26 for the health sector in the 2022 budget.
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