…Asunafo South MP
The Member of Parliament for Asunafo South in the Ahafo Region, Hon. Eric Opoku has predicted that the government’s Agenda 111 hospital construction project is rhetoric that will end nowhere.
In a radio commentary on the project, Hon. Opoku reveals that the project is likely to fail because the government is broke.
“All the promises in 111 will end in a smoke; Ghana is broke,” he said adding that the evidence that there is no money for the project is captured in the budget that the government itself has been presenting.
“It’s in the budget. President Akufo-Addo has admitted that after they pay salaries, there is not enough money left to even pay interest on our loans,” Hon Eric Opoku pointed out in an interview on Accra-based XYZ TV.
In August 2021, President Akufo-Addo cut sod for the so-called Agenda 111 massive hospital infrastructure project which includes 101 district hospitals, six regional hospitals in the newly created regions, two specialized hospitals in the middle and northern belts, as well as a regional hospital in the Western Region and renovation of the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital.
Before the groundbreaking ceremony on August 17, 2021, at Trede in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region, the government had announced that it had secured US$100million (Ghc600millon) out of Ghc1.476 billion budgeted for the project.
According to Hon. Eric Opoku, there is no cogent source of funding for the project and that even the US$100million that has been secured was gotten through the mortgaging of future receipts into the Ghana Infrastructure and Investment Fund (GIIF)
“…they have used the GIIF as Special Purpose Vehicle to borrow the US$100million for the agenda 111” Hon. Eric Opoku pointed out.
Meanwhile, Hon. Eric Opoku pointed out that the erstwhile NDC Government under John Mahama has built more hospitals, CHPS Compounds and health facilities than the Akufo-Addo government and that the hype that the government has been heaping upon itself over Agenda 111 is comical