Just when many people were about to raise some questions, the Ministry of Social Development announced on Tuesday this week that there was some movement with respect to the implementation date for the National Health Fund.

The announcement came some three weeks late and was expected to have been a more positive one. The fact is that the original date of implementation was July 1, 2007. The explanation from the Ministry is that the rescheduling of that date to January 1, 2008 was due “to some administrative areas which needed to be addressed prior to implementation.”

It means, therefore, that the Ministry and the Government on a whole were caught off guard in announcing the earlier date without due consideration that there were still matters to be put in place and iron out and that the process would take some more time to plan and refine. Caught off guard, too, were a number of persons who took the original date of implementation for granted and cancelled their health insurance policies with private companies thinking they would be covered under the National Health Fund from this month instead. It is not known how these persons will now manage without health insurance coverage over the coming months –especially if, and God forbid, a problem were to develop in their lives.

The announcement from the Ministry of Social Development (published elsewhere in this paper) states that while the Fund is to be introduced in January next year, three steps have been taken. They are the identification of a Director to manage the Fund; the NHF Board has been established and began its duties on July 15 and the NHF Shadow Board is also in place and began working on July 16. Just what the latter Board is required to do is not clear since the real functioning Board is in being. The Ministry has gone a step further by giving the key dates of September, October, November and December 2007 as well as January 2008 as the months for the implementation process.

As of now there has been no meaningful public discussion on the proposed National Health Fund. This is urgently needed if a matter as serious as this, involving payroll deductions from workers’ salaries and wages, is to be properly understood. There will also be a need for the people to know what health benefits will come their way for the money they will be paying. There are yet other questions to be fielded and answered.

The Ministry has assured the general public that the implementation process is progressing smoothly. Let us all hope so and that all the foreseeable difficulties are well taken into account. Let us not be caught off guard again.

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