A member of the Upper East Regional Communications Team of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Daniel Agengre, has expressed doubt over the NDC government’s commitment to completing the Agenda 111 hospital projects initiated by the former NPP administration.
His concern follows the government’s indication that it may partner with faith-based organizations to finish the facilities.
Speaking on A1 Radio, Mr. Agengre argued that Agenda 111 was introduced after COVID-19 exposed major gaps in Ghana’s health infrastructure, human resources, and emergency preparedness. He said the previous government began the project with urgency, but progress slowed when the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) affected funding.
The plan to get faith-based organizations to join the government to completely support the people, I would just say that the decision lacks urgency, … [and] commitment to our health sector,” he said.
“First of all, let’s look at why we arrived at the decision to construct these hospitals tagged Agenda 111. I think you were in this country, I think, somewhere in 19, 2020, when we were hit by COVID. It exposed our infrastructural needs in the health system. It exposed our human resource demands in the health system. It exposed a serious systemic need in terms of the health sector. And so addressing this canker, in fact, I think the Agenda 111 came in trying to even see if it was possible to finish these projects in time to augment what we had already to deal with the COVID-19 at the time.”
He criticised what he sees as misplaced priorities, pointing to the government’s interest in purchasing new aircraft and other security logistics at a much higher cost than what is needed to complete the hospitals. He questioned why the health sector would receive limited investment while more money is directed toward other initiatives.”
“Listening to Mahama alone some time ago, I think somewhere February, March, he said that we needed about 1.7 billion to complete the Agenda 101 projects. So if there was commitment and parity to our health sector, because we were hit by a certain ‘canker’ that exposed us extremely, one will expect that as a country, we will prioritize these projects because we don’t know when this will happen again.”
The NPP communicator also raised concerns about the decision to set up a new bank for women despite challenges faced by existing state-owned banks.
“You realize that this is a government that prioritizes investing about $400 million to open a brand new bank for women, just for women, but tells you that our health system, once just COVID came and exposed us, has a lot of infrastructural deficits.”
“We are comfortable investing about $400 million in a brand new bank to do what ADB could have done comfortably, to do what Consolidated Bank could have done comfortably,” he stressed.
He believes resources could be better used to address long-standing health facility deficits, especially in districts still without hospitals.
Source: a1radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Gifty Eyram Kudiabor|Bolgatanga
