The Secretary to Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi (pictured) has asked Parliament to consider allocating funds meant to offer medical treatment to top Government officials abroad and have it injected into Uganda’s health sector.
“There are very few Ugandans who go abroad, maybe we need to think as leaders, going forward, these monies we allocate for going abroad for treatment, why don’t we allocate further to strengthen our own institutions? We need to have this conversation,” said Ggoobi.
Ggoobi made the remarks while appearing before the Budget Committee, where Ibrahim Ssemujju (Kira Municipality) reminded him that Parliament did that by allocating money to Lubowa Specialised hospital and asked him to explain what happened to those funds noting, “We gave that money to Lubowa (hospital), what happened?”
Ggoobi instead defended his proposal remarking, “I am putting a very clear statement, the money which goes abroad, why don’t we use it to improve our systems and because I have seen many Ugandans who live longest and we are all treated here, in other words, the system isn’t bad but sometimes I think people go abroad for other reasons, we need to also address these issues.”
