The Wenchi Municipal Manager of the National Health Insurance Authority, Nurudeen Ajansomah, has called on telecommunication companies to extend their services to all remote communities in the area.

This, according to him, will boost the mobile renewal and registration service of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in the Wenchi Municipality. 

“Even though the mobile registration was introduced to make it easier for clients to either do fresh registration or renew their membership, access to telecom services in some interior communities within the municipality has become a major barrier,” Mr Ajansomah explained.

Nurudeen Ajansomah was speaking with JoyNews on the sidelines of mobile registration and membership renewal to mark this year’s NHIS week at Wenchi in the Bono region.

According to him, poor or no access to telecom services in some remote communities within the Wenchi Municipality has made it extremely difficult for clients in these areas to renew their membership via *929#.

He said the situation has been a burden on the rural folks since they struggle to raise funds to travel to the municipal NHIS office at Wenchi before renewing their membership. 

“You get to some communities and they are willing, the information is gone down but they cannot do it because of network challenges.

So we will be hitting those communities to do the mobile renewal for them because we do not want anybody to complain that because of A, B, C they have not been able to access health care.

So from here, we are moving to the interior communities to ensure that we mobilise them and do the renewal for them,” Mr Ajansomah outlined.

He cautioned accredited service providers to desist from extorting money from unsuspecting clients.

The Wenchi Municipal NHIS Manager said punitive measures will be taken against accredited health facilities found to be charging unapproved fees for services rendered.

He encouraged clients who have been coerced to pay illegal fees at the health facilities to report their ordeal to the scheme’s office for appropriate action to be taken.

Mr Ajansomah further cautioned NHIS accredited service providers to eschew acts that will discourage prospective members from joining the scheme, adding office will soon set up an investigative team that will fish out recalcitrant service providers.

Assembly Member for Akrobi electoral area, Winston Francis Gyan, expressed satisfaction about the conduct of the NHIS over the past years, adding “their services, especially human and public relations have improved drastically in the last three to four years and this is a good sign”.