The minister-designate for health Kweku Agyemang Manu has revealed that the 12 districts across the country earmarked for the construction of coronavirus treatment centers was never materialized because the funds were diverted for procurement of Personal Protective Equipments.
The government of Ghana through the Ministry of Health was supposed to construct 12 fully furnished Covid-19 treatment centers through a World Bank support fund initiative in 2020 to curtail the transport of severely affected covid-19 patients to regional hospitals.
However, Agyemang Manu made the shocking revelation during his vetting in parliament today that the funds went into the procurement of personal protective equipment for frontline health workers across the country.
He stressed that the second tranche of the welfare support fund from the World Bank has been released and contractors have been engaged to continue work.
He confessed that “the monies that we were supposed to have utilized through the world bank welfare, almost all went into the procurement of PPEs, face masks, sanitizers and gowns for the doctors and all that so the projects halted a little bit. It is only now that the second tranche of the world bank support is giving us room to actually advance the monies. We asked the contractors to prefinance and we will come on and I believe by close of this year, all these treatment centers will have been completed” he concluded.
Filed By : Agaatorne Douglas Asaah / awakenewsroom.com
