The Health minister has attributed the delay in the opening the University of Ghana Medical Centre to unavailability of funds rather than management tussle.
The $217 million University of Ghana medical centre which was constructed by the Mahama administration has remained closed since its completion over a year ago.
It has been speculated that a tussle between the University Authorities and the Ministry of health over who has the right to manage the facility has protracted the opening of the facility.
The 650-bed facility is the first of its kind in West Africa and second to only few hospitals in South Africa. The then Government secured a loan facility from Harpo Alim Bank of Israel for the project.
Health minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, who appeared before parliament today,June 6, to answer questions regarding the delay said the contractor is owed about 10 million cedis for the phase one of the project.
He also claimed that government currently does not have money for consumables. Mr. Manu nonetheless assured the facility will be up and running by the end of July 2018.
“There are one or two items in phase two that without which we cannot operationalise phase one. We have consumable drugs and non drug consumables that is under phase two, without having money to do this procurement how do we operationalise phase one? There is another critical thing with the phase one project, we still owe the contractor close to Ghc10million in payment before he hands over the facility to us. With all these, it will not be feasible or easy to operationalise phase one so we are doing all we can to ensure the operationalization of the facility”.
Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com/103.5FM
