Adom FM’s Afia Pokua and her news team’s barbaric encounter last Thursday at the hands of the Ablekuma National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Manager must be condemned outright.

Not only is it an attack on press freedom, it is definitely a mark of intolerance, an undeserving characteristic of a public officer whose duty is to serve.  Showmanship in a public office belongs to the days of dictatorship.

The Ablekuma NHIS office is on my daily route except for the odd days when I have to use the George Bush Highway.  I knew it as my local NHIS office and have used it for close to six years in registering and renewing myself and my household’s NHIS cards. So, when earlier this year I started seeing crowds and never ending queues at odd times of the day, sometimes in the sun, I wondered what was going on there.

Then they put a shelter over the open space in front of the office and added benches for seating.  The crowd doubled and even tripled when in July schools went on vacation.  Late evenings one will see nursing mothers, young children and elderly among the crowds still waiting to be attended to.

As my curiosity piqued, I stopped at the office some five weeks ago to investigate.  I was not successful as I was told that the person who could talk to me was not in the office.  I tried again just three weeks ago and got the same answers.  On both occasions, I saw the showmanship and the raised shoulders of officers whose duty, regrettably, is to serve at speed and with a smile to the people who had come showing some confidence and wanting to be part of the scheme.

If indeed Afia Pokua and her team at Adom had not done it, I certainly was going to take on that investigation because I saw that it was time help came to the NHIS clients who continue to spend days there in the queues merely for a biometric card. 

I had not even imagined the deep woes of the clients who troop to the office everyday until when I realised I needed to renew the cards of some members of my household.  So on Friday, 29^th August, I sent my driver to take my two wards to that same NHIS office to get the renewal done. 

They got home shortly after 4pm without the biometric card after queuing for eight hours.  They were asked to come back on Tuesday, 2^nd September for their pictures to be taken.  That 2^nd September, they did not get home until 11.30pm.  This was good 15 hours of waiting for their picture and card to be issued them. 

What is the justification for the waste of man-hours?  How are people expected to get home at 11.30pm and beyond when no public transport was working?  We like to create more confusion when we get engulfed in self imposed chaos.

From the experience of my wards, what they recounted to me during their 15 hours ordeal and from what I witnessed on both occasions I stopped by to talk to someone, Adom FM did what no others had done by highlighting the plight of people who just wanted to join the national health scheme.  

 Unfortunately, someone saw their attempt as an invasion forgetting that we have reached a point where no one has the right to dehumanise fellow human beings either by commission or omission. 

If one has to wait for a total of over 20 hours in queues merely to renew a health insurance card, then there must be something wrong somewhere.  That wrong is the inefficiencies the office continues to display and for which they did not want the media to expose.

It is time for people in public offices to realise that their duty is not to lord it but to serve the people.  For nearly four months or so now since they started issuing the biometric cards, the Ablekuma NHIS office should have known the magnitude of the task and accordingly devised creative ways of reducing the hardships of the same people they are mandated to serve.

In any case, why do we have to go through all these expense merely to acquire a piece of card that says that you are who you are in accessing free medical care?  Do we not have sufficient data on our voter and national IDs?  All it would then require is a specific mechanism in place for those who did not qualify for either of both forms of ID?   Simplification is healthy and less costly.

vickywirekoandoh@yahoo.com