MOH working to fix weaknesses in supply chain system in record time – PS tells PAC

…as lack of communication between AG office, Ministry cited

The Health Ministry has undertaken certain steps aimed that improving the supply chain management of drugs and medical supplies in order to better track contract deliveries.

This was revealed by Permanent Secretary Malcolm Watkins, who informed the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on Friday that the system he inherited last year was broken.
“We have inherited a system from my assumption of office that was extremely broken and more [specifically], the availability of the data you required to forecast and quantify was almost non-existent or extremely exhorted,” the PS stated during the PAC meeting in the Parliament Chambers as the Ministry of Health came under scrutiny in the 2016 Auditor General Report.
Earlier in the meeting, former PS at the then Public Health Ministry in 2016, Trevor Thomas had admitted, during queries from Government Member of Parliament Vishwa Mahadeo who raised concerns of drug shortages and expired drugs in the system, that there were “some weaknesses in the tracking and managing” of contracts for the supply and delivery of pharmaceuticals for which payments were made.
“I think one of the challenges we had… we keep reconciling the items so that whenever it heads into stock, we get the information from the stores that the items have actually come in… It’s something that we’ve been working with because there have been times when the suppliers don’t deliver as per schedules,” Thomas stated.

Broken monitoring system
But his successor, PS Watkins explained that having met an extremely broken monitoring system, he has since been working for almost one year to rebuild this. He was at the time responding to questions raised by Opposition MP Juretha Fernandes, who had enquired about what the Ministry is doing to monitor the receipt of drugs and medical supplies to prevent delays in deliveries.
“In the last 10 months, we have set up a system of ensuring that the warehouse tracks the distribution data to the region so we can develop historical trends which we have to recreate; we ensured that the inventory in the warehouse is more accurate with more frequent cycle counts and inventory management currently; we’ve established a more robust reconciliation tracking system and assigned more staffing to track the deliveries of medical supplies and drugs coming in at real time; we have a daily meeting that tracks the operation flow of the Ministry headed by me directly, and in this meeting, we track the Delivery Notes within a 48-hour cycle to ensure that we know exactly how much Delivery Notes are pending, that the SRNs (Service Receipt Notes) are prepared and are moved to the right department for reconciliation and it moves from the supplier product to the accounting department to be married with payment vouchers. We are hoping with these systems that we’re putting in place that it will begin to improve the systemic nature of the supply chain management,” Watkins stated.
Moreover, another Opposition parliamentarian, David Patterson further queried into the tracking system that was in place previously, pointing out that it was a foreign-funded system that was implemented.
However, the PS indicated that the software system – “Software Management System” – was not being properly updated and because of this deficiency, it would have taken years to rebuild hence the new systems put in place to better track the supply and delivery of pharmaceuticals.
“The system is only functionable based upon the level of expertise and the level of discipline the Human Resources apply to it so kind of ‘garbage in, garbage out’. For the past five years or so, you would’ve seen that the system went through a decline to a point where it became so broken that the data in it was not usable… Once that data is unavailable, I am unable to forecast and do better contracts,” he posited.
According to Watkins, the software uses an advanced system shipment system, whereby the contract is preloaded and when the delivery is made, it is automatically reconciled and deducted from the outstanding balance. He went on to outline that “If that system is not functioning very well, it is very difficult for me to [fix the system]… In normal circumstances, to rebuild that would take years but we are currently doing that in record time,” the PS contended.

Outstanding supplies
Meanwhile, Governance and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Gail Teixeira, who is also a PAC member, has also questioned the functioning of the software system as she bashed the Health Ministry team for not being able to provide the Committee with information requested by members regarding contracts for drugs and medical supplies in 2016.
At the time, the Committee was scrutinising outstanding supplies by agencies/companies that were already paid for. This was after different figures for outstanding contracts were given to the PAC meeting.
The Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, and former PS Collette Adams had indicated two varying figures for outstanding from 2016 contracts with several suppliers. But the acting Procurement Manager of the Health Ministry, Jasmattie Ramrattan, provided an entirely separate figure which is outstanding from just one supplier, according to current records.
This brought another issue to the floor of lack of communication between the AG office and the Health Ministry – something which is a reoccurring issue with other Ministries as well.
Former PS Adams informed the PAC that documents were submitted to the AG office to show that these supplies would have been delivered.
“This definitely is a communication issue with the Auditor General and the Ministry because these vouchers were presented to the Auditor General for clarity [on the status of outstanding supplies],” Adams posited.
Manager at the AG office, Dhanraj Persaud asserted that they never received the documents from the Ministry. He further threw the blame back at the Ministry, contending that if there were indeed representations in the records then the Ministry should have detected it and brought it to their attention for correction.
Nevertheless, there was a consensus amongst the PAC membership on both sides that better systems needs to be put in place for correspondences being shared with the AG office to be properly documented. (G8)