Former Deputy Health Minister, Joseph Rojo Mettle Nunoo, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey and Prof. Aaron Nii Lante Lawson, a former Provost of the College of Health Sciences, have been accused of registering the newly built 650-bed University of Ghana Medical Centre in their names.
According to a Deputy Minister of Health, Kingsley Aboagye-Gyedu, checks from the Registrar General’s Department indicate that the Centre has been registered in the names of nine individuals under the name University of Ghana Medical Centre Company Limited.
Other directors of the Medical Centre were named as: Ebenezer Owusu, Dr. Nii Aryeh, Karen Akiwumi-Tanoh, Dr. Adrian Addoye, Frances Mensah, and Patrick Ayeh-kumi.
The facility which management has been in contention was registered as a limited liability company and incorporated on 10th September 2015.
According to the Registrar General’s document, one Akyaa Arhin was named by the directors as the Secretary to the company.
The company, registered in the name of the nine, is to manage the University of Ghana Medical Centre, “something that was, to the best of my knowledge, financed and implemented by the Ministry of Health,” the bemused Deputy Minister wondered, “are these people synonymous with the university of Ghana?”
Mr. Aboagye-Gyedu told TV3’s Solace-Rose Quartey that “one would have expected that they would be directors as representatives of the various department and institutions of the university and not their private names, but there is nothing showing that these people even worked for the university at the time that they registered the business.
“The multi-million questions that are begging for answers is that, were they working in the interest of the University or in the interest of Ghana?”
He therefore demanded that the directors produce document showing that they were contracted by the university to manage the facility.
CORRECT
The former Deputy Minister, Rojo Mettle Nunoo confirmed that the record at the Registrar General’s Department as presented by the Deputy Minister was “correct”.
However, he pointed out that there was an agreement between the Health Ministry and the University of Ghana that put the “ownership and management” of facility in the hands of the latter.
The University, he explained, therefore proceeded to “incorporate the entity”.
According the Rojo Mettle Nunoo, the university council therefore directed the legal department to carry on with the incorporation, insisting, “the substantive persons you named were the selection of the university council”.
MERIT AND APPOINTMENT LETTERS
He further noted: “The basis for which the university appointed these directors was based on merit, and we are not owning these directorship in our personal capacity, we were all given appointment letters by the university of Ghana to act and serve in that capacity”
He also discounted earlier claims by Mr. Aboagye-Gyedu that the medical centre was financed by the Ministry of Health. The ministry only signed the commercial agreement between the contractor and the ministry, he clarified.
When the Deputy Health Minister was asked if government would revoke the contract the directors have with the university, he said he cannot tell the ministry’s next line of action but said “definitely something would be done”.
By Isaac Essel | 3news.com | Ghana