THE government has allocated about 8bn/- in the 2016/2017 financial year for improvement of maternal health colleges, Members of the Parliament were told yesterday. The fund will be used for improving infrastructure in such colleges in a bid to modernise them.
This was disclosed here by Deputy
Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and
Children, Dr Hamisi Kingwangala. He was responding to Mr Atashata
Nditiye (Muhambwe-CCM) who demanded to know the government’s plan to
improve maternal health college in Muhambwe constituency and others in
the country.
The deputy minister said that out of
8bn/-, about 630m/- has been earmarked for Kibondo Maternal Health
College. The MP noted that a number of colleges in the country were in
pathetic conditions making them to operate autonomously.
“What is the government’s plan to
improve these colleges? Some of them include the one in my constituency
owing suppliers millions of money...what do you do to ensure they are
financially sound?” he queried.
The deputy minister said that so far,
there were 77 maternal colleges which are owned by the government and
the ministry was struggling to ensure they produce competent experts. He
affirmed that through Primary Health Development Programme, the
ministry has been allocating funds to cater for development projects
which are ran by maternal colleges.
“As we target to enroll about 10,000
students per year in our maternal health colleges, the ministry is
focusing on the improvement of infrastructures to make them accommodate
more students,” he noted.
Dr Kigwangalla also said that the
government is currently looking for the fund to clear 6.8bn/- it owes
suppliers who were providing various services to the public maternal
colleges. “We have already verified these arrears amounting to 6.8bn/-,
we will soon clear them,” the deputy minister noted.
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