The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has expressed reservations over calls for the resignation and dismissal of the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, over the botched Sputnik V vaccines deal.
According to him, Mr Agyemang-Manu took decisions that were in the interest of the nation at the peak of the country’s coronavirus pandemic.
“I am empathetic of him, and I expect that others will also realise the type of pressure that he was under at the time and his commitment to ensuring that Ghanaians are safe,” he said.
To him, Ghanaians are only being unsympathetic to the Minister, especially when steps have been initiated to retrieve the money involved in the deal.
“The people [middlemen] have said they can’t supply the vaccines; which means that they have broken the contract, and then we get our $2 million back, and then we move on,” Mr Ofori-Atta bemoaned on Accra-based Asaase radio.
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He added: “I got a number of interviews by European media outlets, and I asked them; you sit there and ask me why I am paying more for vaccines when you are hoarding those vaccines, and I have one out of a hundred people being vaccinated whereas you have eighty over a hundred, and then you sit there and ask me why are you doing this?”
His comment comes after an ad-hoc bipartisan parliamentary committee that probed the deal among other things recommended that the Finance Minister takes steps to recover over $2 million paid to an Emirati middleman, Sheikh Ah Makhtoum for undelivered vaccines.