Members of Boards of public organisations have been urged to add value to their organisations to justify their appointments.
Mrs Florence Hope-Wudu, Managing Consultant of Purple Almond Consulting, a leading corporate governance firm, who made the call, said because boards play a critical role in the progress of organisations, the members must live up to expectation.
“Often, people see public board appointments as rewards for political loyalty. Even if this were so, board members should deliver on their mandate to justify their qualification onto public boards, being mindful of the fact that over 10 million Ghanaians may have qualified for the same appointments,” she said.
Speaking at the opening session of a leadership and governance training programme for boards of teaching hospitals, at Sogakope in the Volta region, Mrs Hope-Wudu encouraged members of boards to consider their appointment as a unique opportunity to serve Ghana and add value to their respective institutions.
The three-day training, facilitated by Purple Almond, aimed at enhancing the governance systems and structures in the teaching hospitals so as to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of boards of directors and senior management, towards achieving health sector objectives.
Among other areas, the training focused on cooperate governance basics, enhancing boardroom effectiveness and skills, public financial management, leadership skills for conflict resolution, measuring board performance, and board governance in procurement.
Nana Kwabena Adjei-Mensah, Chief Director of Ministry of Health, in his address to open the session, charged the health sector agencies to take stringent efforts towards tackling the systemic causes of poor governance in the health sector.
“Leadership and Governance in health is being increasingly regarded as a salient theme on the development agenda and one of the building blocks of Health System Strengthening. Leadership and governance in building a health system involve ensuring that strategic policy frameworks exist and are combined with effective oversight, coalition-building, regulation, attention to system design and accountability. The need for greater accountability arises both from increased funding and a growing demand to demonstrate results,” he observed.
According to him, there is evidence of governance shortfalls in Ghana’s health sector, citing weak accountability and performance management systems, poor Intra headquarters and inter agency operational coordination, collaboration and partnership challenges leading to silo planning and parallel execution of programmes, weak health sector multi-actor policy development, consistency, ownership and implementation framework, and weak link between resource mobilization, allocation, utilization and performance outcomes, among others.
“There is the need for these issues to be addressed to ensure sustained peak performance of the sector. A responsive and accountable governance system is integral in achieving universal health coverage,” he stressed.
The training for the boards of the teaching hospitals, he said,was beginning of implementing a general plan to enhance the governance and management systems in the public health sector.
Results expected at the end of the training, he said, included improved inter-agency coordination and harmonization, enhanced leadership and governance of agency boards, better understanding of stewardship and accountability roles of the agencies of the ministry, strengthening of the relationship between health agencies and boards of the teaching hospitals, as well as enhance board effectiveness, decision-making and conflict resolution skills.
By Edmund Mingle/ adrdaily.com
