Health
By Chiedu Uche Okoye
THE Chairperson of the National Association of Community Healthy Practitioners, ACHPN, Anambra State Chapter, Chinyere Ede, has been accused of committing egregious financial misdemeanours, which have besmirched the image of the association.
ACHPN, which is charged with eliminating quacks among community health practitioners, nationwide, engages in free periodic verification of its members’ licences and certificates to ensure that unqualified persons are weeded out of the association.
However, Ede, who oversees the Anambra ACHPN affairs, is alleged to have been requesting the payment of levies from Anambra ACHPN members as a pre-requisite/qualification for their participation in the ongoing verification.
Nwakego Nsofor, who is a member of Anambra ACHPN, condemned Ede’s action, which, according to her, is bad and inconsistent with ACHPN rules.
“Payment of money for ACHPN verification is unknown to us. It is not our practice. And it is a corrupt act that should be stopped,” Nsofor said.
More so, another member of the Anambra ACHPN, Lauretta Okongwu, said that the amount of money, which the Anambra ACHPN chairperson asked them to pay for the verification was both extortionate and illegal.
“I am a member of Anambra ACHPN. The money I am asked to pay for verification is huge. But, thankfully, I have learnt that no payment should be made before one is verified,” Okongwu said.
Based on the ACHPN rules, payment of money by ACHPN members for the verification exercise is disharmonious with the directives given to members regarding ACHPN scrutiny of its members’ licences and certificates.
And one of the rules of the association is that duly registered practitioners should undergo the mandatory scrutiny of their licences and academic certificates at no cost.
But more worrisome is that the Anambra ACHPN chairperson allegedly threatened those Anambra ACHPN members, who are government employees, with sack and seizure of their salaries if they failed to pay the levies.
And she lied to them that their payment of those illegal levies were the conditions they would fulfill before their licences and certificates would be verified.
Worse still, the Anambra ACHPN members, who were conned into paying the illegal levies, paid into a bank account, which does not belong to the Anambra ACHPN. It is an anomaly that has raised the red flag about the Anambra ACHPN members’ payment of levies as a pre-requisite for their participation in the ongoing verification.
The fact is that not many of the ACHPN members can pay the illegal levies imposed on them as they are battling severe economic hardship, which is pervasive in Nigeria.
But the deluge of complaints received from the Anambra ACHPN members, which borders on the Anambra ACHPN chairperson’s perpetration of corrupt deeds, is tremendous. And it has eroded the trust, which the ACHPN members reposed in the association.
F.O
Tags: Anambra ACHPN Chairperson