The ambulances parked in front of the State
House will be commissioned and deployed regardless of if they have all arrived
in the country, Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu has said.
A ceremony to begin the distribution of the
ambulances, initially set for January 6, 2020 was postponed following a request
from the National Ambulance Service and endorsed by the Health Ministry.
In an interview with Citi News, the Health
Minister intimated that aside from labelling the available ambulances for their
various constituencies, they were ready to be mobilised.
“We are labelling and we are ready to mobilise
and when it comes to the 28th of January, whether all of them are here or not,
what we have done…we will mobilise,” Mr Agyemang Manu said.
There were 211 ambulances in the country before
January 6, when the state said an additional 48 were expected in the country.
The remaining 48 ambulances are expected to
arrive on January 18.
The Ambulance Service has said at least 96 of
them have been cleared from the ports and are undergoing processes like
labelling, installation of tracking systems and being comprehensively insured.
In the meantime, Mr Agyemang Manu urged
Ghanaians to be patient amid criticism over the delays in the deployment of the
ambulances.
The Minister stressed that “there are
inefficiencies we want to right from the beginning.”
“Let us wait a little bit. I am pleading with
the nation. We are not saving them for any fanfare. We are not going to do
politics and campaign with ambulances… what we want to do, let us take our time
and do it more efficiently.”
The government procured 307 ambulances in total
in line with the government’s efforts to improve emergency healthcare in all
the constituencies in Ghana.
The first batch of ambulances arrived in
September 2019 and has been parked at the State House.
During a press encounter, President Nana
Akufo-Addo said he wanted all the ambulances made available before distribution
to avoid any accusations of bias-citinewsroom
