Dissolve K'bu Hospital board - IMANI boss suggests

The President of IMANI Ghana, a policy think tank, Franklin Cudjoe, has called for the immediate dissolution of the board of Ghana’s biggest teaching and referral health post, the Korle-Bu teaching hospital.

According to him, the people on the board lack the required credibility and expertise to manage the hospital.

Korle-Bu has in recent times been hit with several financial scandals and worker agitations.

Chairman of the board, Eddie Annan, resigned on Friday, July 25, after President John Mahama revoked his new health minister’s re-appointment of the hospital’s dismissed acting CEO, Rev Albert Okpoti Botchwey.

In a letter, Mr Annan warned the president that: “There are financial and infrastructural challenges at Korle-Bu, but your main challenge, President, will be to dismantle what seems to be a ‘mafia’ operating at the hospital that is generating wealth to some staff and associates at Korle-Bu."

“When you talk to the average Korle-Bu worker on a calm day, he will tell you the truth, which they are all aware of - these are money making blocs that seriously resist being dismantled.”

Commenting on the development, the IMANI boss said “right from day one, those people who were appointed should not have been there in the first place. I am just saying they had no business, in the sense that, given their past and the businesses they have run, they have no business running Korle-Bu.”

According to Mr Cudjoe, recent developments at the hospital are an indication that no detailed background work went into the selection of the members of the board.

Speaking on Citi FM’s news and current affairs programme, “The Big Issue,” Mr Cudjoe said the country should consider taking profitable public institutions such as the Korle-Bu hospital off government’s subvention in order to reduce the political influence in its operations.