Koforidua, Aug. 30, GNA - The New Juaben Municipal Health Insurance Scheme has registered about 54,000 people, representing 40 percent of the targeted population in the Municipality as at August 15 this year. The Municipality has a population of 136,700 people, according to the results of the year 2000 national census. This was disclosed by the manager of the scheme, Mr Oti Frempong, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Koforidua on Wednesday.

He gave the assurance that the scheme would achieve the registration of the national target of 50 per cent by the end of the year and that management was moving the registration exercise to the doorsteps of the people of New Juaben from September this year. He said management had already started radio announcements to sensitise the people in the Municipality on dates and time that officials of the scheme would be visiting the communities to register the people.

He said officials of the scheme would also visit churches, mosques and meeting places of other religious groupings in the Municipality to encourage people to take advantage of the special exercise being mounted by the scheme, which would last until the end of October this year. According to him, registration of all workers in public service institution in the Municipality had been completed.

Mr Frempong said since the scheme started operation in 2005, it had received claims to the tune of 4.8 billion cedis from its service providers and had paid almost 80 per cent of the amount. He said the scheme had mobilized a total of 1.54 billion cedis and received support of 3.5 billion cedis from the National Health Insurance Council.