Health and Child Care Minister David Parirenyatwa has pleaded with donors for continued funding of the collapsing  health sector and  assured them that they will  not   divert any future  funding extended to Harare.
The Minister made  the plea last week at the signing ceremony for a $13 million Health Transition Fund grant extension from the EU through UNICEF in Harare.
He was also  updating donors on investigations of the  alleged abuse of at least $1.5 million which was part of the Health Transition Fund meant for nurses and  doctors  by his senior ministry officials.
“We had a full day meeting with representatives of funding   partners and the entire senior health staff where we reviewed   both  the negative and  positive  reports pertaining the funds they  have been giving us through the Health Transition  fund”.
“We recommended that there was need for wider consultations before any funds are distributed a thing which was lacking before.
“We also discussed the issue of targeted approach I n which hospitals were given money directly from government without following any other procedures and channels.
“This was also causing some  loopholes .We  agreed  that  this should go ahead but there  must be ways which should  be followed, ensuring that tender procedures have been  agreed up on by the head office,”Dr Parirenyatwa explained.
Recently   Health Services Board Chairperson Dr Lovemore Mumbengeranwa   said told reporters that government was aware of how the alleged misused funds were used.
“What people do not understand is the fact that we have gone through various steps where from the multicurrency situation everybody was earning $100  you know that and we are in the process of building up the salary structures and various allowances .
“One of the things which arose during the hyper inflationary era is that we had a situation where junior grades because of the allowances they were getting were now earning mo re than their senior grades and you know that is an unattainable situation in terms of supervision,”said Dr Mumbengeranwa.
“So as a temporary measure certain allowances and in this particular case On Call allowances were being paid to doctors who are stationed in the Ministry.
“We need those expertise, we need those highly qualified doctors to run programmes, but their counterparts who were working as clinicians were getting these On Call allowances and that brought about a serious discrepancy where at the end of the day you not have been able to attract staff to work in administrative positions .As a result and as a temporary measure, treasury was quite clear, yes they can get it and its treasury which endorsed that.
“As a temporary measure they could get these allowances but, please do not call them On Call allowances call them something else and of course we were over taken by events in the process,”he said.