The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIS) says there is nothing wrong with its donation of GH₵250,000 to the national COVID-19 Trust Fund.
The Authority said the gesture falls in line with its mandate and forms part of its corporate social responsibility.
The NHIA has been criticised by some of its service providers after it made the donation to the fund on Wednesday.
The service providers say the NHIA’s move is misplaced as it is yet to pay them their claims, some of which have not been paid since February 2019.
The President of the Private Health Facilities Association of Ghana, Samuel Boakye Donkor said the NHIA’s conduct is “bad and painful,” especially because that money could have been used to pay them.
But the Manager of Communications and Media Relations of NHIA, Barimah Sarpong said the donation was for a “worthy cause.”
He argued that the donation was taken out of the company’s budgetary allocation for corporate social responsibility and therefore does not mean that payment of claims will be affected in any way.
“We don’t channel all our monies into the payment of claims. It doesn’t work that way. If we entertain this, very soon, we are going to ask why we are paying salaries when we haven’t paid claims… We have been paying claims and we haven’t stopped, so this GHS 250,000 cannot stop our payment of claims,” he said.
Barimah Sarpong added that, “this is not a donation that is going into entertainment of anything that is not worthy, this is a donation toward a worthy cause, fighting an epidemic in Ghana so it is not unwise to take GHS 250,000 from the budgetary allocation of NHIS meant for our corporate social responsibility to help fight COVID-19.”
