Fiscal Responsibility Committee Urges National Eye Center to Improve Transfers to Consolidated Income Fund

Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) has called on the management of the National Eye Centre, Kaduna, to improve remittances to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Bello Aliyu Gulmare, leader of the Northwestern Federal Government’s ongoing physical project verification team, called during the verification exercise at the National Eye Center, Kaduna.

According to Gulmare, the team was not only in Kaduna to verify the federal government’s projects at the center, but also to verify the revenue performance of the center, namely revenue generation and remittance to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).

He encouraged the Center to ensure that it collects receipts on any kobo that is transferred to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), as that is the only evidence acceptable to the committee.

The leader of the team, who is also the head of the Commission’s Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, explained that the verification was intended to boost the current government’s good agenda on prudence, price quality, transparency, and accountability in efforts to meet the desires of the people.

The verification, he continued, must also be done within the framework of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), and the reason for this, he explained, was to ensure that the government starts projects that it could fund, to it adding that with MTEF compliance, instances of abandoned projects will be greatly minimized.

The verification exercise is to determine projects that required financing in line with completion targets and to reduce to the bare minimum approvals for new investment projects for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) where existing indebtedness to contractors has yet to be resolved by the concerned authorities.

He noted that the National Eye Centre, Kaduna is greatly underutilized in terms of patronage and suggested that the center devise better ways to market its services to the public, emphasizing the need for general awareness of its services.

FRC’s team leader commended the Procurement Unit and the Center’s Finance and Accounting Department for their efforts to apply fiscal discipline in their day-to-day operations, and further suggested to management to periodically send for more training/capacity building for the procurement staff so that they can do their best in their rhythm.

Some of the projects audited at the center include the rehabilitation and repair of 50-room student hostel accommodation, the rehabilitation of a 110-seat lecture hall, the rehabilitation of 14 rooms of transit hostels for doctors, and the purchase of medical equipment for eye tests and operations such as the operating microscope, optical coherence tomography angiography and other medical laboratory equipment.

In his remarks, Abdulkadir Mohammed Kabir, Administrative Director representing the Chief Medical Director, who was on another assignment, described the center as the best and most advanced eye care facility in the country, which started as a regular eye clinic for the largest modern theater in all of West Africa.