Malawi Government has trimmed to K483 million arrears owed to Christian Health Association of Malawi (Cham) in outstanding service level agreement (SLA) payments.
The unpaid bills, which stood at K3.1 billion as of July 2023 and covered 2022/23 and 2023/24 fiscal years, choked operations of Cham facilities.
But in an interview yesterday, Cham executive director Happy Makala said government had made remarkable progress in clearing up the outstanding bills.
In a July 2023 memo addressed to all health coordinators and hospital directors in the organisation’s affiliates, Cham said the total arrears was about K2.3 billion for fiscal year 2022/23 and K817.3 million for fiscal year 2023/24.
Makala said after a series of negotiations between Cham management and Ministry of Health officials, government managed to settle all the arrears for the fiscal year 2022/2023.
In a written response, he said: “There has been tremendous improvement in the settling of SLA bills by government in that arrears from 2023 were settled and the balance from 2023/2024 fiscal year is now only K483 million.”
Currently, there are 168 Cham facilities and over 80 percent of them have already signed contracts this year although the process is ongoing.
The SLA arrangement mostly covers maternal (pregnant mothers) and under-five services and Makala said when SLA reimbursements delay, service delivery is heavily affected.
According to Makala, the programme, which covers about 25 percent of the national population, is expected to benefit over 5.6 million people this year.
Commenting on the issue, public health advocate Grace Febbie Ngulube said while the reduction of arrears was commendable, the K483 million was still a significant amount to affect Cham facilities’ operations.
“The Ministry of Finance must allocate a protected budget line specifically for SLA payments to avoid diversion of funds to other priorities,” she said.
Under the programme, people especially in rural areas where there are no government health facilities, are allowed access to health facilities run by Cham to achieve the universal health coverage.
