By Olasunkanmi Akoni

lagos—As part of measures to reposition and enhance efficiency across the Primary Healthcare Centres, PHCs, Lagos State Government, yesterday read the riot act to staff of tge health faculiries who have non-chalant attitude to duty. Special Adviser to the Governor on Primary Healthcare, Dr. Femi Onanuga made the remarks when he paid unscheduled visit to PHCs in Epe to inspect their workings, shortcomings and find ways to salvage situations in them.

The monitoring is part of government’s move to reposition the PHCs, make them functional and accessible to grassroots people in order to decongest the secondary healthcare facilities. PHCs visited include Epe, Mojoda, Afuye, Eredo, Odomola, among others.

Onanuga, who condemned what he called unwholesome activities in some of the PHCs, such as staff not reporting for work on time, bushy environment, among others, said government embarked on the unscheduled visits to PHCs across the state since January, 2016 and that over 90 of the 276 PHCs and health posts had been visited.

While admitting unsatisfactory state of progress at the PHCs, he assured that the gaps identified would be fixed. Onanuga explained that the essence of the monitoring “is to see what we have on ground, the governor has passion for health of the people. We want to monitor the PHCs and see what we have on ground and ensure that the staff are working.”

“We don’t want to see a situation where we say we have six staff in a particular PHC, only two are coming to work, this is not acceptable.” The special adviser said after the PHCs had been monitored, government would carry out an evaluation and then fix the shortcomings identified in them.

He therefore, warned that government would not hesitate to sanction health workers who showed nonchalant attitude to duty through late coming and absenteeism from work.