×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

MetBank liquidity crunch affects HTF allocations

News
LIQUIDITY challenges currently haunting Metropolitan Bank have spilled into the health sector.

LIQUIDITY challenges currently haunting Metropolitan Bank have spilled into the health sector with rural public clinics failing to access their Health Transition Fund (HTF) allocations from the bank since last July.

Feluna Nleya

In an interview with NewsDay on Saturday, Community Working Group on Health executive director Itai Rusike said the bank’s cashflow problems had affected operations at rural clinics in 44 districts which used to receive subsidies from the HTF.

“The clinics are suffering because they have not been able to withdraw their funds since July last year,” Rusike said. “Most of the clinics’ money used to be deposited into Metropolitan Bank accounts and now the clinics are not able to access it. Although others have opened new accounts elsewhere, they have not been able to get the money.

“They are no longer able to access the money and not able to get new disbursements despite opening new accounts. They can’t meet administrative costs.”

The HTF is a multi-donor-pooled fund managed by Unicef to support the Ministry of Health and Child Care to achieve “the highest possible level of health and quality of life” for all Zimbabweans.

It was introduced in 2009 to support efforts to mobilise the necessary resources for critical interventions to revitalise the sector and increase access to healthcare through eliminating payment of user fees for expecting mothers, under-fives and citizens aged 60 years and above.

Zimbabwe’s health sector collapsed at the peak of the economic meltdown in 2008 after major public hospitals throughout the country shut down due to staff and drug shortages.