The Western Highlands Provincial Health Authority (WHPHA) in its efforts to provide a better health service for its people has set facility service targets for all facilities to meet this year.

An agreement containing the targets was signed by the four District Health Officers and the WHPHA Management during a meeting in Mt Hagen recently, attended by many of the facility staff.

The service targets for the rural facilities including health centres, health sub centres, community health posts and aid posts had been set following a process of consultation and negotiation between the facilities and the management.

The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the WHPHA, Mr. David Vorst signed the agreement on behalf of the CEO, Dr. James Kintwa who was out of the province on duty travel.

Mr. Vorst told the officers that the agreement was basically a monitoring tool to measure performance in the respective facilities.

“We want to find out why indicators go down so that we can assist you. We need to measure our performance and see how we are getting on and provide assistance where we can”, he said.

The Deputy CEO said maybe indicators were low because particular staff needed further training to improve the services that were provided in a facility.

“This agreement is not to measure your performance and punish you if the indicators go down but to assist you to improve. It means you have to do your job and we have to do ours by assisting you to do your job properly and better”, he said.