Rogue Soldiers Prevent MPs From Inspecting Abandoned Afari Military Hospital

A military garrison has reportedly been situated around the abandoned 500-bed Military Hospital at Afari in the Ashanti Region with instruction to prevent people from accessing the building.

Consequently, on Monday, September 27, Minority MPs on Parliament’s Health Committee were prevented from accessing the abandoned project when they went there on an inspection tour.

According to reports picked up by Whatsup News, the visit had been unannounced and had been provoked by media reports on the abandonment of the project which had been started by the Mahama government.

Apparently, the same media reports caused the government to station a military detachment at the place to prevent members of the public and the media from accessing it for further reports.

Journalists who had gone there with the MPs had also been physically prevented from accessing the abandoned project and filming it according to reports. 

According to reports, the Ranking Member on the Health Committee, Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh insisted on inspecting the project saying, “Whatever we are doing here should be filmed,”.

 However, the soldiers stood in the way of the Legislators under instruction from the Akufo-Addo government to ensure that nobody is allowed to film the pathetic state of the project bequeathed to the government by the Mahama government.

Later the group visited another uncompleted project in the Sekyere Afram Plains district in Kumawu.

The Kumawu and Fomena hospitals are part of seven facilities financed by the UK Export Financing, and work was to be completed in 2019 at the cost of 173 million euros. However, it remains uncompleted in 2021.

According to the Akufo-Addo government, it received only $38.3 million out of contract sum US $175 million for the project.

Hon. Akandoh accused the government of disrespect for the Ghanaian people. 

“What I have seen here is an affront to the mandate the good people of this county have given to the president. I think that this government is a group of old men who have no respect for the stakeholder…If for nothing at all, we were here more than two years ago, if the president respects the parliament of this country, at least they would have responded positively,” he said.

“We are paying interest on the loan contracted for this purpose meanwhile the people in this country have not benefited from this project. This project was awarded somewhere in 2015 which should have been completed by 2017 and we are in 2021 and we are in the weeds. When you talk they will sit in Accra and try to defend,” a peeved Akandoh fired.