Permanent Secretary for Health Dr. Jemese Tudravu [File Photo]

The Ministry of Health in this financial year rolled out the minor works allocation and has decentralized and asked for approval through virement process.

The virement procedure is when you put in place a formal system of approval for an administrative transfer of funds from one part of a budget to another.

Permanent Secretary for Health Dr. Jemesa Tudravu says through this process, the money is under the control of the divisional heads, and they don’t need the PS to approve the infrastructure works at the facilities.

Dr Tudravu says they’ve got a cap in their authority, they approve the work, and the work starts.

“And this experience this year, we found that it’s been really good. In most of our facilities, the utilization has been quite high, even some beyond 100 percent that we had to support.”

Head of Finance and Asset Management, Idrish Khan, says that in terms of minor works, the divisional medical officers and medical superintendents currently have an approval limit of $25,000.

Khan says the Permanent Secretary’s limit is $50,000, and the sub-delegation is $25,000 to Divisional Medical Officers and Medical Superintendents.

He adds that this was centralized due to the gaps.

However, he adds that one of the areas that they saw was that there was a delay in the in the process when it was centralized because it had to go through so many offices.

Therefore, he adds that they decided to decentralize the funds.