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UE/R: Leakages in revenue at veterinary service over unemployed Veterinary Technicians

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Some fourth unemployed Veterinary Technicians in the Upper East region have created jobs for themselves by diverting clients to themselves and charging higher fees.

Upper East Regional Veterinary Officer, Dr Patrick Abakeh, tells A1radioonline.com in an exclusive interview that at least 40 unemployed Veterinary Technicians in the region who graduated from the Veterinary College and Animal Health Production College at Pong-Tamale are yet to be engaged by the government.

He explains that due to government’s inability to employ these graduates, they have taken advantage of the situation to render services to members of the public at their own determined fees which he says is creating revenue loss to the state.

“They often buy drugs on the open market and because they are unemployed, when they do the work, they don’t bring the service charge to us. The monies go into their pockets” he lamented.

Though Dr. Abakeh cannot determine the quantum of revenue loss as a result of the activities of these technicians, he says “their activities largely affect revenue targets for the veterinary service since they are competing with us”

Instead of 145 required numbers of veterinary officers and Technical staff, the Upper East Region currently has only 44.

This shortage according to Dr Abakeh makes it possible for quack veterinary officers to “fill in and serve our farmers but they are not been properly monitored and the results are not always good”

Dr. Abakeh noted that the lack of logistics has pressured officials to use their own logistics to serve clients. He said the officials normally raise charges of some of the services, because “the staff usually fill and use their own means of transport for outreach and add up the cost of service even though they are not approved charges”.

“Because we don’t give them fuel, when they go out, they put the cost of the fuelling on the charges, so if something is supposed to be ghc1, they will increase it to ghc1.50” Dr Abakeh added.

By: Joshua Asaah|A1radioonline.com|Ghana

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