NGOs monitoring the dispersal of government funds to provincial health departments and the Minister of Health said Sunday that most health centers have not yet received funding for 2005.
The revelation of poor progress in the disbursement of funds to priority ministries came as part of a statement issued Friday by the NGO Committee for the Monitoring of CG Benchmarks.
In the statement, local NGOs said that the dispersal problem also applied to education, and that human rights have deteriorated since December’s Consultative Group Meeting with donors.
A government-donor committee will meet this week to measure progress on reforms agreed in December, including better funding of social ministries.
“Salary for January was paid by the end of January. Nothing was paid for February yet. Most provinces say they have not received operational costs for 2005,” said Sin Somuny, executive director of health NGO coalition Medicam.
“Although the health centers can run programs, I do not think they are able to run them at full-scale,” Sin Somuny said.
Minister of Health Nuth Sokhom said that health programs can still operate according to schedule, but payments are delayed. “Every year at the beginning of the year this is a problem,” he said.
“We are optimistic after the recent statements of the Ministry of Economy and Finance that they will soon have regulations that will facilitate access to the funds,” he said, adding: “But…it is already March and they are not able to access the funds.”
For years, the health and education sectors have failed to spend their budgets, while ministries such as the Ministry of Interior have overspent.
Thun Saray, president of rights group Adhoc, said that progress on new basic laws has been good. He also said NGOs are waiting to see whether Prime Minister Hun Sen’s crackdown on corrupt judges will become system-wide.
“If they just try this for a show or to remove a few people who do not belong to the strong group… that is another story,” he added.
