The House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Monday flayed the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for purchasing facemasks, hand sanitizers, protective wears and hand gloves with N152.49m during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.
The committee is conducting a revenue monitoring exercise with ministries, departments and agencies on remittances into the government coffers.
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It also questioned the agency for allegedly spending at least N2.4m on diesel on a monthly basis for its head office in Utako and office annex in Wuse 11, Abuja.
Responding, NHIS Executive Secretary, Prof. Mohammed Sambo, said: “During COVID-19, there was a plan of the Ministry of Health on sectoral response to COVID-19 and because we’re dealing with healthcare facilities, we all know that at the beginning of COVID-19, most of the healthcare workers abandoned their duty post because they don’t have items for their protection.
“As part our corporate social responsibility, we identified first line organizations like police and so on. We gave them those items and we also recognized hospitals that have huge enrollment of NHIS enrollees and we supplied them with these items.
“All the documents are available if the lawmakers needs them. So, this expenditure is not restrictive to NHIS. We’ve been directed to ensure the protection of our people.”
He said the agency realised N47.35m in 2019; N45.5m in 2020 and N11.49m in 2021 from the accreditation and registration of Health Management Organizations.
He said the NHIS also generated N1.61m in 2019; N620,000 in 2020 and N700,000 in 2021 from the tenders paid by contractors.
“We’ve remitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund the sum of N20.5m which represent 25% of the total revenue for 2019.
“We’ve remitted N14.7m which represents 25% for 2020 and for 2021, we’ve remitted N4.46m and all the evidences of remittances are encapsulated in this submission,’’ he said.
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