Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, the Minister of the Interior, has exposed the Police Hospital contract rot, with construction starting over 20 years ago under the NPP’s John Agyekum Kufuor administration.
According to Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, the Police Hospital contract, worth a total cost of £15 million, was audited twice, with the findings revealing that £40 million had been spent on the construction project.
He disclosed that the Police Hospital, which was supposed to be one of the country’s national emergency centres, like the 37 Military Hospital, has been engulfed in corruption.
Speaking in an interview on Pan-African TV with veteran journalist Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Muntaka detailed that when he assumed office as minister, he had been looking for documents pertaining to the hospital project but could not find the documents.
The interior minister detailed, “Sometimes I wonder how we’ve been running our country. I’m looking for the document, the contract, the ministry cannot find a copy, the police cannot find a copy, the Minister of Finance cannot find a copy, the Attorney General cannot find a copy. I said, ‘Go to the archive’. They went to the archive. The file on International Hospital was empty”.
He added, “Yet the group, a British company, they were insisting on coming to meet me. I said, ‘No, I can’t meet these guys when I don’t have any information. I don’t have any facts about this. I don’t have any briefing. How do I meet them?’”
Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka further narrated, “When the Cabinet response came, then I realised that in 2015, the Cabinet approved a forensic audit to be done on the International Hospital, that’s the Police Hospital, which was done”.
“We didn’t find the report. But once PwC was mentioned, I wrote to them that I needed an official copy, and they brought it separately. When they brought it, Crown Agents was mentioned, so I also wrote to Crown Agents.
I needed a copy of what they had done, only to realise that in 2015, PwC had done this forensic audit that showed that International Hospital had been overpaid by about £40 million, and therefore, the government should take steps to retrieve this money and terminate the contract”.
“I kept pushing, only to realise that in 2023, the same Cabinet again authorised another forensic audit, which was done this time by Crown Agents, and they came to the same conclusion that there was an overpayment of well over £40 million,” he added.
He further disclosed that, together with the Attorney General, he has now terminated the contract and is working on re-awarding it so the project can be completed, adding that steps are being initiated to retrieve the £40 miilion overpaymentcited in the audit reports.
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