Ranking Member for Health and Member of Parliament for Juaboso, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has described the government’s sod-cutting ceremony to convert the Bono Regional Hospital in Sunyani into a Teaching Hospital as a hoax.
Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu cut the sod for the project on Saturday.
However, Akandoh, in a statement on behalf of the Minority in Parliament, said the government’s 2024 budget statement and financial estimates, read on Wednesday, November 15, had no allocation for the construction or expansion of the Sunyani hospital.
“There is no known government policy, financial allocation, and the political will to undertake such an expansion of the facility into a teaching facility, and the minister knows there is no allocation in the 2024 budget,” the MP noted.
The sod cutting, he added, is just another grandstanding act by the government to deceive the people of the Bono region and the country.
Arguing his case, Akandoh pointed out that “the supposed sod cutting amid an IMF program and the proximity to an election year is suspicious—especially when the project was not captured in the budget.”
The Ranking Member reminded Ghanaians of the government’s failure to fund similar projects promised over the years after demolishing the well-functioning La General Hospital and an Accident and Emergency Centre at the Dormaa Hospital.
