The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described as ‘lofty’ the government’s ‘Agenda 111 Project’ to construct 88 hospitals across the country and asked the citizenry not to be hoodwinked by the decision.
It called on citizens to ponder “if they can believe such a project is tenable since the government failed to construct a single district hospital in the five years in the helm of affairs but 12 months have passed and not a single one of them has been delivered.
“The president will cut sod for first set of hospitals as if cutting sod is anything significant, bearing in mind he cut sod for supposed major hospital projects including proposed Eastern Regional Hospital and La General Hospital which have not seen a single block laid one year after the fanfare,” the party observed.
Felix Ofosu Kwakye, a former Deputy Minister of Information, insisted that the government failed to deliver the 88 hospital projects promised last year and wondered whether agenda 111 was feasible since it failed to construct a single district hospital in the five years in the helm of affairs.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo reiterated the government’s plans of building regional hospitals in the six new regions to boost healthcare delivery in the country and also indicated that work would soon commence on three infectious disease control centers for each of the zones to improve testing capacities with regards to contagious illnesses.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information had stated that an amount of $100million has been budgeted for commencement of the project. The government had secured 88 sites as part of moves to construct 111 new hospitals, titles to parcel of lands had also been secured and preference given to local contractors and labour.
According to Mr Ofosu, the NDC government had 14 district hospitals and 22 polyclinics to its credit and expressed misgivings about creation of another needless bureaucracy of Agenda 111 Secretariat under Office of the President when Ministry of Health had been playing supervisory role since time immemorial and delivered far bigger projects than currently.–3news.com
