Chairman of the Rivers State House of Assembly Committee on Education, Hon. Doctor Farah Dagogo, and other stakeholders in the Health Sector, have described the State College of Health Science and Management Technology Bill 2018, as capable of setting in motion series of legislative, legal and administrative machineries that would revolutionize the Institution.
This being the dominant submission during a one-day Public Hearing held on the Bill.
Farah Dagogo, who is the Lawmaker representing Degema Constituency in the State Assembly, posited that the bill, when passed into law, will place the College at par with other tertiary institutions in the State that have specialty in the production of middle-leveled manpower.
He expressed optimism that the private member Bill, which is intended to repeal the College’s law No.3 of 2001, would scale through all stages of lawmaking, especially as it would put in place a Health Science and Management Technology Education architecture that would make the College attract educational support services from Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETfund).
On his part, the State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Princewill Chike, clarified that contrary to rumours being peddled around, he is in complete support of the Bill but frowned at the movement of the college from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Education.
The Commissioner for Health also argued that if the bill is passed into law, it would allow Health professionals undergo training from all nooks and crannies of the society, which he noted was detrimental to the Health sector.
In his own submission, a former provost of the institution, Professor Nnanna Onyekwere, urged members of the Committee to forget about whether the College was under the Ministry of Health or Education, but rather concentrate on its attendant benefits to the growth of the institution before considering its passage.
