Guyana may have to immediately repay US$5m to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for a once-vaunted nutrition programme which the new government says has thrown up conflicting data and accountability problems.
Junior Minister of Finance Jaipaul Sharma yesterday told Stabroek News that the government will be asked to repay the entire IDB loan for the Basic Nutrition Programme.
The ongoing programme, first introduced in 2003 with several extensions including one in 2010, revolved primarily around the manufacture by the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (NGPC) of a sprinkle containing nutrients to fight anaemia. The Government of Guyana also injected US$2.3m into the programme. The PPP/C government had lauded the programme as one of its success stories and it had been recognised by the US Treasury in 2012 and also hailed by the IDB.
Sharma stated that an internal audit of the sprinkles component revealed conflicting data as to how many units were produced and how many were delivered to the target group which would have been pregnant mothers and children under five years. He said that the only thing that was certain was that NGPC, which was contracted to produce the nutrient supplement, was paid.
He said that the new government was being asked to repay something that they were not even aware of. The loan had two components with grace periods of six years and 40 years. Sharma said that foreign- funded projects provided a level of difficulty because they needed to be executed within the time frames set out or the country risked losing necessary funding in the future.
Sharma told Stabroek News that an audit revealed that some 70,000 units were not distributed while other packages of the supplement were left to spoil. The programme had provided funding to go into a delivery system to get the nutritional supplement to those who would need it.
Public Health Minister Dr George Norton recently told Stabroek News that he is alarmed at the inconsistencies that are currently being discovered in the basic nutrition programme, saying that if Guyana is unable to account for the money spent the government could be faced with paying back the funding.
Norton said that through speaking with persons who were involved in the implementation and the distribution of the nutritional supplements as well as speaking to recipients it is becoming clear that the programme was not as successful as it was once heralded by the former PPP/C government.
He stated that the nutritional supplement was in fact not being used properly.
Norton said that the programme additionally did not use all of the funding. Moreover the minister said that the remaining sum was transferred from the Public Health Ministry to the Ministry of Housing and used to construct homes in the hinterland regions.
He said that the IDB-funded programme would have had provisions in place on how to use the funding. He said of the sprinkles, “it comes in a satchel, a little package and you were supposed to put it on crushed cooked food rather than add it to milk and do on. As a result …I am of the opinion that parents, even though it was distributed in some instances, it was not used correctly.”
Norton continued that “it was supposed to be colourless and tasteless, this does not seem to be the case…it was not used, it was not complied with. I doubt whether mothers used it in the first instance or whether they gave their children at the beginning.”
He said “at the beginning of the project persons were paid to distribute it so it was actually distributed, but when you question mothers in their homes, which we are now doing, it doesn’t appear that it was used as it should have been if at all.”
The minister said that while the programme was highlighted as a success upon further investigation there were significant flaws in the distribution and the explanation on how to use the supplement. Additionally, the supplement was in itself not colourless or tasteless which may have deterred mothers from using.
The programme began in 2003 and was to end in 2007 however the Health Ministry had stated that there would be an extension of the programme until the end of 2008.
At the time former Health Minister, Dr Bheri Ramsaran was a Minister within the Ministry and had stated that 30 health centres were added to the 49 health centres that the programme was utilizing to distribute the sprinkles. He had noted in 2008 that studies found that the prevalence of anaemia had dropped by some 32%, acute malnutrition had decreased by 49% and chronic malnutrition had fallen by 12%.
“[And] we are quite comfortable with the data and the analyses coming out of that data from the first set of health centres which show that indeed our objectives have been achieved… And because of that the programme has been extended”, he had said. The programme was said to be ongoing up to recently.
