An oil-funded project at Breman, in the Suame Municipality of the Ashanti Region, has become a ‘sticking point’ between authorities of Suame Municipal Assembly and the Breman West Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Hospital.
The unoccupied two-storey bedroom apartment completed almost a year ago and financed with an Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) of about GH₵180,000 in 2020, is being redesignated for use by other government functionaries other than the initial arrangements.
The project originally said to be a nurses’ quarters and located almost on the same compound of the Breman West SDA Hospital, according to the Nurses Manager, George Atta-Owusu, was intended to help the hospital to accommodate its critical staff.
While the hospital awaits to be handed over the building, several months after its completion, Mr. Atta-Owusu said the hospital is not able to offer prompt responses to emergencies, as all the critical medical staff live far from the facility and often have to drive at odd hours to attend to emergencies.
The Breman West SDA Hospital, with an average OPD attendance of over 200 patients daily, serve several communities and towns in and outside the Suame Municipality including Suame, Barekese, Offinso, Abuwakwa, Tafo, Pankrono, among others.
Mr. Owusu-Atta said management of the hospital continue to engage officials of the Suame Municipal Assembly on the timelines for the handing over.
He disclosed this in an interview on the back of a visit by some members of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), led by the Chairman, Prof. Kwame Adom- Frimpong.
The committee members expressed worry over the seeming neglect of the facility while the hospital battles to attend to emergencies.
However, the Suame Municipal Chief Executive, Prof. John Osei Bobie Boahin, in response to the development, explained that the facility has momentarily been reserved as a ‘COVID-19 Holding Center.’
He said the facility will subsequently be handed over to the Health Directorate as part of plans to designate it for use by staff of some recently established health facilities in the Municipality.
Prof. Bobie Boahin, who was speaking in an interview after the PIAC inspection, contended that the operators of the private health facility upon engagement, in the past, could not produce any documentation to back their claim to use the facility.
He observed that at the time of the construction of the facility, then under the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), there was no government health facility in the Suame area.
Again, despite being initially agreed for use by the hospital, he said the Municipal Assembly met with the hospital authorities concerning it. This was towards ensuring that there was “proper documentation to ensure that some account can be rendered to the Assembly after use.”
“We realized that they had no document that spells out the condition of their operation of activities in that facility,” Prof. Bobie Boahin stated.
Coincidently, the MCE said the Assembly has now built a new hospital at Suame Magazine in addition to another health facility constructed by the GNPC Foundation, at Kwapra. It is the staff of this new health facilities that the Assembly intends to hand over the building for use, he said.
With COVID-19 infection going up in the Ashanti Region, he said the assembly has no choice but to reserve the building, for the time being, as a “COVID-19 Holding Center” and later hand it over to staff of the Kwapra Hospital.
“We have plans to further the building to provide accommodation for the increasing medical staff now being sent to the Municipality.”
