Gov’t Sat on €270 million Abandoned Hospitals Fund for over 7 Months

Whatsup News can report that the Akufo Addo administration had sat on some €275 million approved by the Ghanaian Parliament since 2019 for the completion of several abandoned health facilities started by the erstwhile administration of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

During a September 19, 2019 press briefing at the Information Ministry, Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu announced that Parliament has approved a €274, 290, 429.00 million and an additional $20 million for health projects in the country.

He said Cabinet and Parliament approved the amount to allow for the continuation of old projects that had to be phased out due to lack of funding.

However, till date, these health facilities are still rotting away because the government has refused to complete them as promised.

This has raised questions about the credibility of President Akufo Addo’s announcement on Sunday, April 26, 2020, that his administration, which has barely a year left out of its four-year tenure will complete 88 district hospitals within eight months.

In the early days of the Akufo Addo administration, Accra-based Citi FM and pressure group-Occupy Ghana had petitioned the about the disturbing neglect of the same health facilities, of which the Presidency responded saying  the projects undertaken by Messrs Euroget De-Invest S.A at a cost of US$ 339 million would be completed between 2018 and 2019.

The Presidency went ahead to give specific timelines for the completion of these projects which include: the Kumasi Regional Hospital (promised completion date, June 2019); Salaga District Hospital (August 2019), Nkawkaw District Hospital (December 2018); Twifo Praso District Hospital (April 2019), among several others.

The contracts for the abandoned projects were reportedly signed in January 2010, but could not start until 2013 because of some conditions precedent that were not met.

Eventually, the projects were at semi-complete stages as at 2016 when the then NDC administration that kick-started them was kicked out in 2016. Since then, the projects have largely been left at the mercy of the elements by the new administration led by Nana Akufo Addo

The past record of failures in the health infrastructure sector has forced critics to take with “a pinch of salt” President Akufo Addo’s promise to complete 88 hospitals in less than one year.

The NDC  Ranking Member on Parliament’s Health Committee, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh has asked the President to first focused on the abandoned hospital projects before thinking up the ambitious 88 projects.

 “Yesterday I heard the President say that he is going to construct 88 hospitals within one year. There are a lot of questions and I must assure the president that, gone were days that he could throw anything at us and it will not be subjected to proper scrutiny. I believe that now Ghanaians will not allow him to do such things because first and foremost that money isn’t in the 2020 budget and it has no provision in same,” Mintah Akandoh jabbed the President.