The chairman of the committee, Hon Alagie S. Darboe, challenged the hospital management to adjust and provide missing documents to the committee.
The management of Farafenni General Hospital presented their 2016–2021 annual activity and audited financial statements to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Public and Finance Committee on Tuesday, October 10, 2023.
Baton Drammeh, the principal finance director of Farafenni General Hospital, disclosed to the committee that the hospital had a total revenue of D48,304,132.84 in 2020.
“It has a total payment of 43,469,975.46, and it has a closing cash balance of 15,012,134.50,” which is the end of December 2020, he disclosed.
Sering Mass Jallow, director of Audit at the National Audit Office, has audited the financial statements of Farafenni General Hospital for the year ended December 31, 2020. The financial statements comprised a statement of receipts and payments for the year ended December 31, 2020.
“In our opinion, the financial statement and related notes set out on pages 9 to 22 present fairly in all material respects of the Statement of Receipts and Payments of the Farafenni General Hospital for the year then ended December 31, 2020, in accordance with International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) Cash Basis,” he stated.
Mr. Jallow added that in some instances, payment voucher numbers were replicated in 2021 as the payment voucher numbers were allocated to more than three different suppliers.
“We noted that the hospital has four subaccounts with expenditures on different line items amounting to GMD 751,204.17 in 2020 and GMD 2,031,973.40 in 2021. These payments were posted in the cash book but not recognised in the financial statements,” he told the Committee.
He added they also noted that procurement amounting to D751,204.17 in 2020 and D2, 031,973.40 in 2021 from the hospital subaccounts during the period under review did not undergo the GPPA procurement process.
“We noted that the hospital did not observe some of the minimum standards requirements outlined by their line ministries, among them is the non-availability of preoperative and public health officers and other categories in the hospital designation which are under staff.”
Mr. Jallow further revealed to the committee that they noted that a check dated May 7th, 2018 amounting to D59,587.40 was paid to X on May 11th, 2018, but since then the cheque has not been cashed by X.
“However, it still appeared as stale cheque in the 2020 and 2021 bank reconciliation statements,” he said.
The management should ensure that they liaise with X to settle the liability by replacing the stale cheque, as recommended.
Mr. Kebba Manneh, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Farafenni General Hospital, said that the total admissions over the years have progressively increased by 10.8%. He said the overall number of surgeries performed in the hospital have significantly increased in recent years with an increase from 392 (2020) to 789 (2022) i.e. an increase of 18.7%.
Mr. Manneh said for other services including dental, refractive services and X-Ray not much progress was recorded.
“While uptake for refractive services reduced by 38% between 2015 and 2017, dental OPD attendance increased by 11% from 2904 (2020) to 3261 (2022). An increase of 15.0% in X-Ray services registered between 2021 (1872) and 2022 (624)," Mr. Manneh told the NAMs.
Mr. Manneh also disclosed that Laboratory services continue to play a significant part in overall patient outcome.
He said hemoglobin test accounts for 23.7%, 41.6% and 34.7% of all tests performed for the period under review.
“The Hospital received various forms of support from individuals, institutions and agencies towards the enhancement of effective and efficient service delivery. Thus, the entire management and staff are extremely grateful,” he said.
