The Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan has said that the program to receive new ambulances into the region after President Nana Akufo-Addo commissioned them earlier this week can best be described as a stakeholder meeting and not a re-commissioning as being reported.
According to him, there was a need for such an event to be held to ensure that all parties who had a role in ensuring that the ambulances function, get to understand their roles and duties.
Many have criticized Regional Ministers who are holding separate ceremonies before putting the ambulances allocated to them to use but the Central Regional Minister says such an event is justified.
“We have a meeting of all of us as stakeholders, myself as the Minister representing the President in the region and then the MMDCEs representing the president in the district and then the Ghana Health Service and such allied agencies who also have some sharing in the purpose for which the ambulances were procured. We needed to meet for all of us to know our specific roles and duties to ensure that the ambulances do not just become showpieces in the districts but we will be committed to doing the work for which they were procured,” he said.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Ho Central constituency earlier this week criticised the Volta Regional Minister’s plans of recommissioning the ambulances after they had arrived in the region from Accra.
Sefadzi Agama, the Ho Central Constituency Communication officer of the NDC, argued that “maybe somebody may be in the need for ambulances at the moment yet they have been lined up waiting to be recommissioned before distribution.”
“We think that it is a waste of time, there is so much waste in the system,” he added.
Critics of recommissioning of ambulances need deliverance – Volta Regional Minister
But the Volta Regional Minister, Dr. Archibald Letsa, in response said another commissioning in the region is important to enable people who may not have watched or read about the commissioning by President Nana Akufo-Addo in Accra to also have first-hand experience.
“The people of Ghana, many of whom may not have watched it on television or might not have read newspapers also need to know what has happened,” he said at the Volta Region Coordinating Council.
“When ambulances have been allocated to Volta Region, there is nothing wrong with the ambulances coming to the coordinating council for us to receive them and hand them over to be taken care of by the assemblies. Anybody who criticises this has a problem and we need to take him to a synagogue for deliverance,” Dr. Letsa also joked.