Health Minister, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has revealed that the entire national fleet of government ambulances was operating without insurance when he assumed office.
Speaking before Parliament’s Government Assurance Committee, Mr Akandoh said the Ministry of Health has since taken urgent steps to ensure all emergency vehicles are fully covered.
He explained that the historical lack of insurance coverage left the state bearing the full financial burden of repairing or replacing vehicles damaged in crashes.
“Mr Chairman there’s an interesting story to that. The interesting story is that when the ambulance are not insured and they run into accidents or they have accidents you cannot get replacement. And you must cough money to go and fix these ambulances. Mister Chairman as of the time I took office as a minister responsible for health all our ambulances were not insured. All of them were not insured,” Mr Akandoh told the committee.
The minister assured MPs that this policy oversight has been corrected, and every state ambulance in the country is now insured.
Fleet operational updates
Providing an update on the current state of the national emergency fleet, Mr Akandoh disclosed that roughly two-thirds of the country’s ambulances are actively on the road.
“Um more than almost three hundred ambulances and um about sixty-five percent of them… sixty to seventy percent of them are in operation. So our sixty to seventy percent are operational. They are serviceable… around two hundred between one eighty to two hundred thereabout. That are in operation,” he stated.
Mr Akandoh added that the government is actively working to resolve the deficit by repairing broken-down vehicles and procuring new units to strengthen the country’s emergency response capacity.
“We are mindful that those those ambulances that are faulty we are looking at how we can fix them to put them on road but we are also looking at how we can buy more ambulances to add to the fleet.”
The Government Assurance Committee stated it will closely monitor the ministry’s progress in maintaining the current fleet and executing its expansion plans.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
