–in areas of education, health, President Ali announces
–points to further decentralisation efforts, solutions to effectively address existing gaps

EMPHASISING the government’s commitment to enhancing service efficiency, President Dr. Irfaan Ali, on Tuesday, outlined a vision to further reduce the cost and time it takes for citizens to access government services while simultaneously improving the quality and effectiveness of service delivery.
Focusing specially on the health and education sectors, the Head of State engaged regional executive officers, regional health officers, and regional education officers from across the country on strategies aimed at improving the delivery of government services at the community level.
“We want to reduce the costs of people receiving government business, reduce the time it takes them to receive government service, and improve the quality and delivery of that service. And that is being more direct, being more approachable, creating a more customer oriented environment, and ensuring that all the investments that we are making deliver at the optimum level,” Dr. Ali said.
The meeting involved a frank discussion on challenges and dissatisfactions, focusing on how to confront these issues to optimise the value of investments.
Already, he noted the government has a clear strategy outlined and persons will be held accountable for how service is delivered to the populace.
The strategy includes ensuring every member of the population has access to world-class education and health services.
In these sectors, the President stressed that service to people must be efficient, reliable, transparent and accountable.
TREMENDOUS INVESTMENTS
The Head of State said: “We have been making tremendous investments to improve the lives of our people, and its key and it is key that bureaucracy or people does not form an impediment in service delivery.”
The Head of State also acknowledged the challenges in regard to efficient infrastructure, training, and supply management.
Dr. Ali said: “What we really sought to achieve today was finding the formula that would fix existing issues, the inefficiencies in the system, whether it’s the small issues like washroom sanitation issues within health centres, health outposts, schools, or whether there were structural issues of changing the system to make it more people centre and people oriented.”

He added: “We [are] focused on fixing what needs to be fixed. We had a full discourse on all the gap that exists.”
Solutions proposed include decentralising medical supply management, implementing a quality assurance body, and ensuring continuous support through health centres.
“We will decentralise the delivery of medical supplies in the regions themselves, so that in the regions, they will have their entire year supply, and through an electronic platform the daily use will be managed and reconciled,” Dr. Ali said.
The President assured citizens that by the end of the month, every region would have the demand chart ensuring there is no gap or slack time in the delivery of medication to patients.

He said: “The investment is there. The government is buying all the medication that is needed. We are buying the textbooks. We are buying the exercise books. We are buying the teaching material support.”
Further, to ensure that these services are delivered, the government will establish a government quality assurance body which will include members of civil society in every region.
Although there are gaps, there are also many successes and much progress being felt across the country.

Regional Health Officer of Region Ten (Upper Demerara-Berbice), Dr. Gregory Harris, pointed out that significant progress has been made to improve the delivery of health care, especially to riverine and hinterland communities.
While Dr. Harris highlighted several challenges that were faced by health officials at the community level, he noted too that solutions have been put in place to address the gaps in the delivery of healthcare.
He said: “This was something that was plaguing Region Ten, where the healthcare workers had difficulty taking healthcare to people or home visits. Today we can boast within our region over 90 per cent of our riverine areas have a functioning boat and functional engine.”
He explained further: “All of these different systems that we would have put in place is to reduce the economic burden… It doesn’t make sense if you offer free healthcare and then you have to pay a lot of money to access that.”

Dr. Harris also emphasised the increase in health financing over the past four years, which has taken healthcare delivery in the region to the next level.
He was among several regional officials who engaged the President during the meeting, and highlighted the successes and progress in their respective regions.
Also present at the meeting were Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh; Education Minister, Priya Manickchand; Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony and Local Government and Regional Development Minister, Sonia Parag, among other officials.