Former Health Minister under the erstwhile Mahama administration, Sherry Ayitey, has broken her silence on the importation of some 30 ambulances under her stewardship at the Health Ministry.
Speaking on the issue for the first time after the news broke in 2017, Madam Ayittey rubbished the reports that she refused to send a team to inspect the ambulances in Dubai prior to they being shipped to Ghana as contained in the agreement.
Speaking on Adom FM’s morning show, Dwaso Nsem Tuesday, Madam Ayittey said she left the Health Ministry even before the first batch of the ambulances arrived.
“I left the Health Ministry even before the first batch of the ambulances arrived so I couldn’t have stopped the agreement,” she said.
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Standbic Bank, according to her, had promised to back government’s ambulance importation with a 15 million euro credit but upon her arrival at the Health Ministry, the said credit was withdrawn.
“If a bank promises to give you money to go buy cars or ambulances and after three or four years you still have not purchased the cars, that money will be taken away. It will not be there forever waiting for you, and so at the time I got to the Ministry, Standbic Bank had already withdrawn the loan facility and government now had to fund the importation of the ambulances,” she said.
Efforts to get the Finance Ministry release funds for the importation of the ambulances proved futile till she left her post.
“I had nothing to do with the stoppage of the ambulances,” she noted.
Backgorund
Former Health Ministers in the erstwhile Mahama administration were implicated in a controversial ambulance saga.
Alban Bagbin, according to reports, did not do due diligence when he signed a contract for the supply of 200 ambulances for which the first 30 delivered ambulances were found to be defective.
Madam Ayitey on the other hand, is said to have prevented staff from the Health Ministry from inspecting the ambulances in Dubai.
The Health Ministry in 2012 awarded a 2.4 million-Euro contract to a company owned by the special aide to former National Security Advisor, Joseph Nunoo Mensah.
Out of the 200 ambulances expected to be procured through Big Sea Trading LLC, the first 30 of the vehicles supplied were found to be unfit for purpose.