By: Haja Hawa Koroma
The Ministry of Finance has released a Submission of Recommendations from a meeting held with the Sierra Leone Medical and Dental Association on the 27th of July 2022.
The Ministry writes in response to their correspondence, dated 25th July 2022 with Reference Number M1/S/6 Vol. II, in order to communicate the issues raised in the Ministerial Task Force Meeting relating to the Reinstatement of COVID-19 allowances for Health Workers and the Weekly fuel allocation of 45 Liters to be eligible to Health Workers.
The Ministry has conveyed its approval to the Hon. Minister of Finance to allocate financial resources to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the reinstatement of the previous COVID-19 allowances as salary increase has been approved with effect from September 2022 amounting to NLe 20,85 million (Old Le 20.85 billion) and an Extra-budgetary allocation of NLe 93 million (Old Le 9.3 billion) to cover the weekly allocation of 45 Liters of fuel to eligible Health Workers to cover the period July to December 2022.
Furthermore, relevant documents including PETS Form 1 and Payment Vouchers for each hospital for the processing of the document on a quarterly basis, starting from the third quarter FY2022 of NLe 4.698 million (Old Le 4.698 billion)
The letter further mentioned that the utilization of the fuel should not be in cash but in the actual delivery of the fuel to the eligible Health Workers with retained evidence for post-utilization audit verification.
Finally, all the Health Workers that are assigned to Government and/or donor-funded vehicles, with the provision of fuel from any official source, should not double-dip.
