Dr. Figueroa Says No Hanky-panky Under His Watch

Ramon Figueroa

We also asked C.E.O. Figueroa about a series of financial shenanigans which allegedly took place under his predecessor Peter Allen. Multiple audits revealed serious breakdowns in and non-adherence to financial checks and balances which should have been instituted and monitored by the Ministry of Finance. Figueroa says that things will be different under his watch.

Dr. Ramon Figueroa, C.E.O., Ministry of Health

“There are a lot of things that need to be addressed. When I was Director of Health Services we had met with the different regions and the technical advisors and one of the things I wanted to share with them was the value and principles under which we will be operating in the new management, and one of them is accountability, transparency, responsibility, commitment, hard work and teamwork. In essence what we are telling people is that we will give you more responsibility but that comes with accountability. We’re setting up mechanisms to do proper monitoring and evaluation across the board – not only financial audits and monitoring but also audits in terms of quality care, ensuring the people are adhering to the protocols and guidelines, trying to get our teams to be more sensitive to people – more people centred. So to answer your question directly – YES! We do put a lot of attention. We believe that it’s extremely important that we put in place good monitoring mechanisms. We’ll give you more leeway to operate in the regions, but we are going to ensure that we are out there on a regular basis monitoring what happens and checking what happens. I’m not going to stand here and tell you we may not make mistakes and things won’t go wrong from time to time, but we are going to put our best effort at ensuring that these things don’t happen.”