By: Osman A.M
HARGEISA (Somalilandsun) – The deputy minister for health Hon. Nimo Hussein Qawdan has refuted allegations of misappropriation of funds meant for the just concluded vaccination exercise appearing in some media outlets.
Hon. Nimo Qawdan while addressing members of the press from her offices in Hargeisa termed the allegations which appeared on qaran website on the 8th March as baseless, fabricated & inverted story, far from the truth meant to mislead the general public as to the usage of the said funds. The site had prior reported that funds for the vaccination exercise were mismanaged with no forensic audit carried to account for their expenditure upon concluding the exercise.
The deputy minister while dismissing the content of that news item asserted that the vaccination exercise was funded jointly by UNICEF & WHO with the ministry tasked with implementing administrative modalities for the successfulness of the project while at the same time providing the breakdown of the expenses incurred.
The health ministry’s second politician in command wondered loudly how that media outlet ridicule nationalism by terming its name (choosing the name qaran which when loosely translated means nationalism) as an insult to sovereignty of statehood & wellbeing of the country.
Hon. Nimo Qowdan also advised media houses to ascertain the veracity or otherwise of their news item before airing printing or posting its contents to their ever eager consumers so as to distinguish real facts from innuendos, hearsays & rumors
She revisited a prior allegation which had appeared in Ogaal, a daily paper from Hargeisa that had reported that senior ministry officials asked for bribes from UNICEF’s country officials in order to accept implementing schemes which were deemed to be of societal benefits in areas of child & maternal mortalities before warning that if these trend of unethical journalistic misconducts are not check then, she opined that, it would open floodgates for future defamatory suits consisting of libel as well as slander.
