The Minister for Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has disclosed that a whopping 9million dollars is needed to complete one of the Agenda 111 hospitals at Bokoro, in the Ahanta West Municipality of the Western region.
The Bokoro facility was one of the three Agenda 111 hospitals that former president Akufo Addo commissioned on December 5, 2024 before leaving office.
However, during inspection of the facility on Monday, it became evident that the facility is not ready for operation.
Works are still ongoing and major departments like Out Patient Department (OPD), Laboratory, Theatre, Ultra Scan, Theatre and others are yet to be completed and furnished.
Sector Minister Kwabena Minta Akando, who toured the facility in the company of the Western regional minister, Joseph Nelson, the Director General of Ghana Health Service (GHS) and other key staff of the Ministry spoke to the media.
According to Kwabena Akandoh, it was evidently clear the project had not been completed. He indicated that key departments that make a hospital function were not ready. “The impression is that once it is not completed you can’t call it a hospital. The impression is that we are owing the contractors and we have not paid.
You can’t call it your property when you have not paid the contractors. The impression is that the facility is not in operation and I’ve explained what it means for a hospital to be in operation. Must have the equipment, well installed, everything completed. You must have health workers, everybody, the various department, the pharmacy in operation, laboratory in operation”.
Kwabena Mintah Akandoh indicated further that, “a hospital is not just the brick and mortar, and that is the more reason why If you recall, I was requesting to see certain departments, take me to the laboratory, take me to the Theater. Take me to this place to see, you cannot commission a project without hospital equipment being installed – you cannot”.
As part of strategies to let the people of Ghana know what President Mahama has inherited, with respect to the Agenda 111 hospitals, Minister Akandoh, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Juaboso, told the media he has a clear instructions from the President to assess all the agenda 111 projects and give him a blueprint as the way forward.
The agenda 111 project was estimated to cost, including a Psychiatric hospital, about 1.9 billion US dollars.
As at the time the NPP government was leaving office, they had expended not less than 400 million US dollars on the projects.
The Minister told the media that completing the project was one thing and paying for the project to become the property of the state was also another thing.
“As we speak, we need to cough out not less than 9 million US dollars for this particular project, which is about 140 million Ghana cities”.
That aside, the contractors behind the projects had not been paid and as government, they needed to fulfil their part of the obligation by way of paying the contractors before the property could be in the name of Ghana.
He justified the figure by explaining that there were three different contractors behind the projects, one behind the main project, another in charge of accommodation and supply of medical equipment and installation.
“Only one, and he’s with us here. We owe him 3 million US dollars, you can talk to him. So we need not less than 9 million US Dollars, you can see the installation of the equipment. It’s less than 10%, you saw it for yourself, even in the labs.
“I mean you saw that kind of, I don’t want to say confusion, but the kind of disagreement where who needs to do what before what is installed. You heard all that, okay, and so please, the least that is expected of us as leaders of this country is to be candid with the people of this country. So we will be as plain as glass, and carry the people along and let them know what we have inherited,” he said.
Nevertheless, he assured the facility would not be left to rot and would be used for the benefit of the communities.
He said, given the fact that the projects did not have a dedicated source of funding, the government would have to find a source of funding for it.
He assured further that “It is Mr. President’s priority to put the projects to good use. So wherever and whatever it takes for us to operationalise, especially this first three, we are going to find the money”.
