By Stephen Kalema
Government, through Ministry of Health, is to start paying allowances to all village health workers (VHTs), beginning February 2019.
While at Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child Health (RMNCH) assembly, Minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng said the government will come up with a new plan to start giving an allowance of Shs185,000 monthly to every village health worker as a reward for the tiresome work they do.
The meeting was attended by First Lady Janet Museveni.
“For a long time government had neglected village health workers yet they do a significant work in villages. The new strategic plan will see all of them recognised,” said Aceng.
However, according Aceng not all village health workers are to receive the said allowance but only those who will qualify through guidelines suggested such as age and academic levels. “We are going to take only VHTs aged from 20 years to 35 years who have at least senior four certificate. And by January next year they shall begin training. Aged VHTs will be laid off slowly,” noted Aceng.
After comprehensive training, qualified VHTs will be sent back to their respective villages and start working in February, but their allowances payments will start in January.
“We are doing this to increase efficiency of our VHTs in all the 15,000 communities. Our VHTs do a lot of work in sensitizing our communities and because this work requires movements at times by footing, we shall need young people at most 35 years,” said Aceng.
According Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the acting director general Health Services Ministry of Health, VHTs will be selected by their local authorities to avoid confusion.
However, Mrs Museveni refuted the idea of sending away the old VHTs without any appreciation.
“These old VHTs deep in the village have always worked hard delivering medical services. It will be very bad to just lay them off empty handed. At least they should be given an appreciation package,” Mrs Museveni, also Minister of Education and Sport, said.
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