Performance Based Financing no solution to health workers’ absenteeism

The sick are always poorly attended to because health workers are not paid on time

I don’t know why employers are so blind when it comes to employees needs.

Researchers at Makerere University School recently proposed that the government should pay health workers across the country basing on their performance to curb absenteeism.

They claimed that if adopted, the State Minister for health agreed.

When I heard this, the first thing that came to my mind was, where have these researchers been? Have they been on Mars or on the moon? According to what they proposed, it clearly shows that they have not been in Uganda.

All along the one problem that health workers have been facing is delayed salaries which not only led to poor performance and lack of commitment to their work but also resulted into incessant absenteeism from work in search of money elsewhere.

So, how can these researchers come up with such an outrageous proposal that lacks background research?

The main reason why health workers have been negligent in their work is simply because their needs have not been met. Besides their salaries being delayed at all times, the conditions they work in are very poor.

While the government has endeavored to build health centers on the other hand it has failed to facilitate these centers. One will discover that health workers execute their duties with poor equipment or no equipment at all.

So, I totally disagree when researchers propose that PBF will solve the problem of absenteeism simply because even if health workers are paid for their performance but are not paid on time, absenteeism will remain.

Therefore the best solution to the issue of absenteeism would be to pay health workers in time. This would motivate them and they would have no need to look elsewhere for money.

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