Letter to the Editor, Thursday March 3, 2016

Waiting for answers

In reference to the article 'New era for Ahipara Health' (February 18), there are several points that require clarification, and may be of interest to the wider community.

In May last year an employee of the Ahipara Health and Resource Trust, along with an individual who believed she had trustee standing at the time, began to raise suspicions of financial misappropriation. A financial report detecting thousands of dollars of unaccounted-for monies was prepared by these individuals. Both these individuals were dismissed, and threats of legal action against the employee quickly ensued.

The trust scheduled a meeting at the local marae in June 2015, but quickly dispersed when members of the public queried alleged misappropriation of public monies. Their actions intensified, growing mistrust that has been long-held within the community, and a core group was established to follow through community concerns.

These included a lack of transparency and accountability, negligence in service delivery contracts and systems failures in terms of contract reporting and monitoring schedules (the latter being the responsibility of Te Hiku Hauora), and form part of government requirements that ensure services are delivered according to contract stipulations and public monies assigned to these are used accordingly.

Te Hiku Hauora sub-contracted to the trust for the delivery of mobile nursing services, which comprised the trust's primary income. It is widely believed this service was not delivered as stipulated within the contract, and there is no available data to suggest the service was being accessed by those it was designed for.

There are suspicions that any internal data from the trust has been over-exaggerated and/or falsified. Opinions that are shared by many as the absence of daily access to the service (apart from the weekly doctors' clinics) was noticeable.

Letters to the Minister and his representatives consistently called for a full audit into the affairs of the trust and accountability of the various agencies involved (i.e. AHRT, THH and NDHB), as well as transparency in investigative findings, community participation in all decision-making processes and calls to ensure corrective action is taken to address any discovery of misappropriation. Sentiments we expect require "further exploration," as agreed upon by NDHB representative Margareth Broodkorn.

To date, full disclosure has not been forthcoming and responses to community requests were not taken seriously, until a final letter was sent in October last year, threatening media exposure. Shortly after, NDHB and THH quickly met with marae representatives with a focus on 'moving forward'. Subsequent correspondence and meetings with NDHB and THH representatives indicate accountability and clarity is not high on their agenda (in fact it's absent), somewhat contradictory to the public statement made by NDHB representative Margareth Broodkorn.

This begs the question, how do you move forward when absolute accountability has not been achieved?

In conjunction with the Ministry of Health, NDHB, you are charged with the distribution of public monies, and therefore are the government arm of accountability to ensure designated monies are used appropriately.

Te Hiku Hauora, you are, and have always been, responsible for the overall monitoring of the largest health contract in the Ahipara and surrounding districts. As such, you have failed in your contractual obligations to protect the health and well-being of our community through the required reporting and monitoring schedules.

We are now entering month nine of this debacle. THH and NDHB, consider yourselves on notice. If you will not seek accountability, we will.

To the two individuals who started the corrective action process, you have succeeded where others before you have not. Thank you for your honesty and your courage.

CONCERNED RESIDENTS
Ahipara