Painstaking investigations conducted by The Chronicle newspaper have revealed fraudulent deals in the operations of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in the Adansi South District of the Ashanti Region.

In its Friday publication, the paper reports that as a result of these fraudulent activities, two persons were recently picked by the New Edubiase police for questioning.

The two, Messrs Samuel Osei Afrifa, Assistant Accountant at the local office of the National Health Insurance Scheme and Sarfo Duodo, also a driver at the assembly according to police source were arrested and granted bail on the 14th and 18th of August this year respectively for allegedly forging and processing cards to beneficiaries without regard to the regulations governing the implementation of the Scheme.

The paper also gathered that bribes were collected from innocent people by some staff of the scheme so that they (beneficiaries) could get their cards within two weeks instead of the normal three months period.

Further investigations revealed that some of the payments by the beneficiaries were not covered by any receipts while other staff members were said to be duping the system off several thousands of cedis.

When reached on phone, the Public Relations Officer of the Adansi South District office of the National Health Insurance Scheme who only gave his name as Master Albert confirmed the arrest of the two persons but pleaded with this reporter not to carry the story since, "you know any publication would cause a great problem for us".

The District Chief Executive for the area, Mr. Francis Dorpenyoh also in an interview yesterday, (September 6th, 2007) confirmed the arrest of the two staff of the assembly but said the case was still under investigation.

He, however, hinted that his office had for sometime now suspected foul deals in the operations of the Scheme in the area but said all efforts to track down the perpetrators had yielded no positive results adding "that is why we are supporting the police to investigate this particular case".

"The arrest of the two officers is the beginning of greater things to come and that is why we are giving it a low profile. We want to go deep into until we get to the bottom of the matter," he added.

He therefore cautioned other staff to be wary since the law would deal drastically with anyone caught engaging in any fraudulent acts.

Meanwhile, the paper is following the story and would update readers on new developments.

Source: The Chronicle