Government is currently seeking to have over US$3M in a loan funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the Basic Nutrition Programme re-directed to a Hinterland Housing Programme.
The original US$5M loan by the IDB for the programme, which was signed in 2010, is under review by the bank after conflicting reports over the success of the Sprinkles nutrition programme, the outstanding packets of the nutritional supplement that have remained undelivered and the remainder that is yet to be produced under the contract with the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation.
Junior Finance Minister Jaipaul Sharma told Stabroek News that the IDB had written the government over the loan stating that there needs to be a full refund of the portion of the loan unaccounted for, or a submission for the financing to go to other eligible projects or a combination of the two. He noted that Guyana’s response was the proposal for the Hinterland Housing Project.
Sharma told Stabroek News that the government’s Health Sector Development Unit, knowing that the programme had been drawing to a close at the end of February 2014 and was later extended to June 2015, tabulated the supply and delivery under the programme.
He said that this was normal operating procedure for projects that are funded through the IDB for an audit to be done at the end of the programme.
Information on the distribution of the Sprinkles programme was found to be significantly different from that which was previously provided. Sharma stated that since the Unit contested what the previous finding was more investigation needed to take place.
Sharma stated that the IDB loan can be redirected once the specified programme has drawn to a close should there be outstanding sums.
The junior minister told Stabroek News that just over US$445,000 worth of the nutritional supplement from the original US$1.5M that was paid to NGPC remains outstanding. He said that the data indicates that roughly 8M packets for pregnant women and infants remains outstanding and are yet to be manufactured. It could take up to eight months to deliver the nutritional supplements.
Roughly 4.3M packets that were to be used by pregnant women to combat anaemia and 3.3M meant for infants are outstanding to the total value of US$445,000. “That is the amount we don’t have evidence of being delivered,” Sharma stated.
He clarified that some 663,000 packets are already ready for distribution but have not been delivered to the health ministry by NGPC. The packets that are yet to be delivered cost just over US$31,000.
He noted that in July 2012 then Permanent Secretary in the health ministry Leslie Cadogan had begun the process of ending the contract with NGPC.
Stabroek News had been previously told by the Minister of Health Dr George Norton that the Sprinkles which were supposed to be odourless and tasteless were not.
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 so 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 programme originally had its start 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.
