By Stephen Chandisareva.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – The Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) with
support from the Inter-Ministerial Taskforce on the Alignment of Laws with the Constitution (IMT) held a workshop to consult stakeholders on the alignment of the Health Services Act with the new Constitution.
Speaking at the event Chief Government Pathologist with the Public Health Laboratories, Dr Maxwell Hove commended the government’s drive to revisit the Health Service Act and ensure its values and principles relates with the new constitution.
“Health Service Act came into the effect in 2005 and it has been noted that some of the methods that are used to constitute the governance of the Health Service Board are not in line with the good principles and values of public administration as meant in Chapter 9 of the new constitution.
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“In the current Board you see some board members are appointed by the minister and some are appointed by the President.
“So given that kind of scenario, it behooves the government to revisit that structure to ensure that it is in line with the values and principle insinuated in the new constitution.
“In the Health members Board, the Act make provision for the appointment of board members as from district, provincial, general and central hospitals, and now it makes provision for the Minister to appoint those board members but once the board is appointed they report to Health Service Board and not to the appointing authority”
“So this has created disharmony in the management office and in some cases you end up having some board members reporting to the Health member Board and when they feel it doesn’t suit them they want to report to the Minister because the Minister has
appointed them.
“So that alignment is also required in terms of governance to create harmony,” he said.
Hove went on to urge stakeholders to give their views on the Health Service Act from the perspective of various interest group.
The consultation workshop were attended by key stakeholders from various government departments and civil society organizations including around the country.
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