As President Uhuru Kenyatta continues to slay the corruption dragon, a fresh scandal has rocked the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
It has now been revealed that NHIF that offers medical insurance to Civil servants and private members may have lost hundreds of millions in the biometric registration of members that kicked off in 2015.
NHIF had embarked on the use of fingerprints to identify all its members when seeking services in health facilities.
During launch of the exercise NHIF CEO Geoffrey Mwangi said the fund had completed the biometric registration of civil servants and it was in the process of enrolling other members.
The use of biometric identification was expected to reduce cases of fraud in the medical cover scheme.
Our snap check in government institutions including Kerugoya hospital, members of staff seem unaware of such product, but they told our team that they only heard of the product a year ago, although nothing tangible has been done.
The CEO further noted that at least 1,370 hospitals had been fitted with biometric kits by 2017.
He said the programme will take three years and will be completed by 2018.
Currently, the fund has about 6.7 million principal members and in total, serves about 20 million Kenyans.
In 2015, the NHIF started the biometric registration of civil servants and security officers as the first step to migrate its members to the use of smart cards to identify themselves in hospitals.
