...Stops 500 Bed Hospital
It has been confirmed that an ultra modern 500-bed capacity Military Hospital project slated for Kumasi in the Ashanti region has been abrogated and the project shifted to Accra.
Though Accra already has a Military Hospital and the Kumasi one was to have served the Northern Command of the Ghana Armed Forces, DAYBREAK has confirmed that ‘a small but powerful cartel’ has ordered that no such project should be situated in Kumasi, therefore the new Military Hospital would now be built in Accra and interestingly, it would be situated on the same compound that houses the 37 Military Hospital.
When DAYBREAK contacted the Ghana Armed Forces for an explanation over the matter, Colonel M’Bawine Atintande; Director of Public Relations, said the relocation became necessary when it became obvious that that sector already has several hospitals and moreover getting land had become a problem because the original parcel of land that would have been used for the new hospital at Kwaadaso had been partly taken over by civilian encroachers.
It may have been a slip, but Colonel M’Bawine Atintande also mentioned a “change of government” as one of the reasons. Interestingly, the Colonel wrote his explanations and signed them on the official letter head of the GAF.
Reports say the Transition Team responsible for Defence, the Armed Forces Council and Cabinet all kicked against the project when National Democratic Congress (NDC) took office.
After painstaking investigations, DAYBREAK can authoritatively reveal that unless serious protests from officers and men in Northern Command, the second Military Hospital in the country will never see daylight.
The idea to have a second Military Hospital for the Ghana Armed Forces and the nation as a whole was mooted by the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) under the auspices of Dr. Kwame Addo Kufuor when he was the Minister of Defence.
DAYBREAK gathers that the necessary consortium was put in place, funds sourced for and contracts prepared for the commencement of the project at Kwadaso in Kumasi.
According to our investigations, immediately the John Mills/Mahama took over power in 2009, the project was reviewed on various occasions.
“Several meetings and discussions took place until a decision was taken to stop the project in Kumasi and send it to Accra to be an extension of 37 Military Hospital instead of a separate ultra modern state of the art Hospital to be sited at Kwadaso where enough space had been provided by the chiefs and people of the area”, a source noted.
Before the final decision to shift the project to Accra at the various stakeholders meetings, the common thread DAYBREAK picked up was that the location of the project is the “World Bank” of a certain political party thus should not be given that important facility.
It is alleged that when the stakeholders were against Kumasi by majority vote, the Vice President suggested that the project to be moved to Tamale.
Further investigations revealed that the issue of the location of the project in Accra at 37 Military Hospital, where land availability has become a problem, was sent to the Castle for a cabinet meeting.
In the meantime, the contract for the project is alleged to have been awarded to an Egyptian Company (An Arab Company) instead of the original contractor.
Our sources pointed to a certain lady of Arabian extraction who we are told exercises so much influence in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Ministry of Defence thus the contract was awarded to the Egyptian Company.
Our investigations showed that the decision to site the second Military Hospital in Kumasi was based purely on operational and administrative needs of the Ghana Armed Forces.
Our sources indicated that in military matters, time is of real essence especially when medical care and delivery are concerned.
Though DAYBREAK’s sources concede that all Garrisons have Medical Reception Stations (MRS), all these are more or less “clinics” and not Hospitals.
“The location of the second Military Hospital in Kumasi was to serve military personnel and their families in the Northern Command and indeed the general public”, a source noted.
The Northern Command Covers troops stationed in Kumasi, Sunyani, Tamale, Yendi, Bawku and other trouble-spots in the five regions.