The Health Minister is heading to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to demand investigations into how 30 ambulances which were not fit for the purpose, have been paid for by the erstwhile John Mahama government.
According to Kweku Agyemang Manu, the ambulances, the cost of which was estimated at $2.4 million, were procured under questionable circumstances by the previous administration.
The ambulances which he described as “sprinter buses fitted with kitchen panels” are currently parked at the military naval base.
He told journalists he was shocked at the sight of vehicles and how a decision was made by a public officer to pay for vehicles like those.
He does not immediately know the circumstances under which the vehicles were paid for but said, the Health Ministry had initially rejected the vehicles.
Kweku Agyemang Manu found it intriguing how the same vehicles which had been rejected were later paid for with the tax payers’ money.
“…They realized it did not meet specification. It was like they were not vehicles they could use as ambulances and so they rejected them. During the transition the report we had was that the supplier supplied, they never accepted and so we never paid them and we don’t owe them,” he said.
But months later they started getting intelligence information the same vehicles had been paid for.
“I wrote to Minister of Finance and they said we had paid for Ministry of Health,” he said, adding the Ministry of Health had no documentation to confirm any such payment.
Interestingly the Minister said an employee of Big Sea, the company that supplied the vehicles did not even know the vehicles had been paid for.
That official had been in court with the company over other issues.
The Minister said the vehicles were not paid for by any loan arrangement and suspects they were paid from the consolidated fund.
Kwaku Agyemang Manu said he is sending the documentation he has gathered so far to the National Security or EOCO to investigate the matter.