COVID-19 World Bank Funds Utilisation Monitoring Report: Recruitment of Emergency Health Care Workers

The scope of this monitoring report is restricted to monitoring the World Bank supported recruitment of
short-term emergency health care workers during the period June 2021 to April 2022. This recruitment
sought to provide support to health service delivery, which was considerably burdened during the peak of
the COVID-19 pandemic. As reported by Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI), this was an
exceptional expenditure for which funds amounting to ZMW78, 889,789.04 [approximately USD ($)4.9
million] of World Bank funds were expended.
This was Transparency International Zambia’s (TI-Z) second third party monitoring, with the first being of
ZNPHI’s disbursements of funds to designated provincial and district health offices1
. TI-Z third party
monitoring (TPM) interventions are aimed at enhancing independent monitoring of the World Bank’s
support and thus providing evidence to inform reform, revision and adjustment of the COVID-19 response in
Zambia.
The TPM sought to assess transparency and accountability mechanisms particularly in resource utilisation
pertaining to the recruitment of emergency health workers. The monitoring findings highlight the following:
i. Overall feedback from respondents indicates that the process of recruitment and contracting was
transparently conducted;
ii. The recruitment of supplementary health care workers was relevant in supporting and lessening the
strain posed on health care services during the pandemic;
iii. Notwithstanding the above, a number of issues were raised and these included under payments of
emoluments and non-provision of payslips to the contracted health staff, which made it difficult for
health care workers to distinguish elements of basic pay, allowances and statutory deductions.
Based on these findings, TI-Z recommends for the strengthening of human resource management processes,
particularly, remuneration processes in the Ministry of Health (MoH) and ZNPHI presently and in future.