Public Agenda

Korle-Bu crisis?Health Minister in a fix over conflicting reports

The Public Agends says conflicting reports from official investigations into allegations of fraudulent practices at the Korle-Bu Teaching hospital, have added to the chaos at the top level of Ghana?s biggest hospital rather than offered a basis for a clear-cut resolution.

The paper in a lead story, says at the time of going to press, the Minister of Health, Mr Samuel Nuamah Donkor, had not pronounced on the contradictory findings of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Justice Osei Committee of Enquiry, which he set up in February this year.

The Public Agenda says the probes were set up after conflicts between the hospital?s doctor-dominated six-member purchasing committee, which oversees the selection of suppliers of medical consumables, and the Director of Administration, Dr Sylvia Anie-Akwetey, came to a head amidst counter accusations of corruption. Last year, the government dissolved the purchasing committee and the blacklisted the main suppliers, Rona Chemists.

According to the paper, the Serious Fraud Office found that the purchasing committee had failed in its duties and that the corruption and impropriety allegations against Rona Chemists, the medical suppliers at the centre of the case, are well founded.

The Osei Committee, on the other hand, exonerated the purchasing committee of any wrong doing. Meanwhile, says the Public Agenda, the main parties in the bitter quarrel over corruption and probity, are each claiming victory and calling on the Minister ?in keeping with their reading? of what has come out of the investigations.