Procurement issues will still persist under Agyeman-Manu’s watch – Franklin Cudjoe

The Founding President of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe says he was not surprised the President’s Minister-designate for Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu failed to answer questions regarding procurement in his tenure as Minister in the same Ministry in the last four years.

According to the IMANI boss, issues around procurements infractions by the Health Ministry are bound to persist in another term under Mr Agyeman-Manu.

Mr Agyeman-Manu on Wednesday, February 10, 2021, faced Parliaments Appointment Committee where he was asked questions about some procurements made in the nation's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asked if he was privy to the contract between the government of Ghana and Frontiers Health Services Limited, a company contracted to conduct COVID-19 testing at the airport, the Minister said he had not seen the contract.

Reacting to this in an interview with GhanaWeb, Franklin Cudjoe said the minister by his answers was only being evasive of an issue he could not possibly deny.

“He obviously had issues with answering questions regarding procurement and I am not entirely surprised because the procurement authority for example called him out during the procurement of ineffective Anti Snake Venom and the answers from the Ministry at the time was not convincing at all just as he was not convincing yesterday,” he said

The head of IMANI expressed surprise at the minister's conduct during his vetting and stated that he anticipates issues around lack of proper procurement processes coming up under the next administration of Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu as Minister of Health.

“I think the procurement issues will continue under his watch, I don’t think the procurement issues will end because he’s been evasive about procurement issues,” he stated.

The Minister nominee during his vetting yesterday was again asked why the government decided to procure the services of Frontiers at a time when the company was not duly registered.

In the minister's answer, he averred that this was because COVID-19 brought a circumstance where things were not done with regards to normal processes.

But Franklin Cudjoe speaking to the minister's answer to the question said: “He was saying that it was because we were under extraordinary circumstances, what did he mean by that? What circumstances?. So we should ignore proper procurement process because we were under extraordinary times?

We were not at war and indeed to think that it was a thought-out plan to introduce the whole price of the testing at the airport. He cannot be telling us that we were in extraordinary times. So what? There were other people who could have provided this for far less.

In fact, Noguchi was mentioned to be able to offer the test at a less price. It's not even true that Noguchi did not have the capacity, I feel a bit insulted to be hearing this type of evasive answers from the minister,” he told GhanaWeb.