The Minister of Health, Dr. Okoe-Boye, has explained that the lack of capacity by some local contractors is a major contributory factor to the slow pace of the completion of the Agenda 111 projects.
The Minister made the statement when he appeared before the Assurance Committee of Parliament to account for some assurances, promises, and commitments made on the floor of Parliament.
The Health Minister opined that the government decided to ensure local content by engaging local contractors for the project. He said that as a pivotal project of this administration, a decision has been made to change some local contractors on the project, largely because they cannot execute the project within timelines.
This has accounted for the change in timelines for the completion of the project.In furtherance, the project, which was scheduled for completion in eighteen months, has since faced challenges such as the unwillingness of some chiefs to release lands, land litigation issues, low capacity of local contractors, difficulty in acquiring lands in some urban areas, etc.
Moreover, Dr. Okoe-Boye stressed that the project design variations are due to the difficulty of land acquisition in urban areas.
The Minister told the Assurances Committee that the President insisted that the project be awarded to local contractors since, over the years, projects in the health sector have been awarded to foreign contractors.
The Health Minister said, “There are some agenda 111 projects that the contractors have to be changed for lack of performance.” The Chairman of the Assurance Committee and MP for North Tongu, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, quizzed the Minister about the government not envisaging all these challenges before the President made a promise for the completion of the project by April 2021.
The Minister assured that twenty-eight of the projects will be completed by the end of 2024. ‘’ We did an assessment of all districts in Ghana and took a look at the capacity of district hospitals to take care of these basic things every primary health facility should be able to do.
Assuming someone cannot breathe and needs a ventilator, do they have a facility that can provide a ventilator?” He said the underlying objective of the projects was that anywhere in Ghana, if things get tough, you do not need to travel to a city centre, adding that the majority of these will be completed before the President hands them over to the next government.
