Incessant pressure from the people of Aformanorkofe in the Central Tongu District to open an abandoned health center has forced the Chief Executive to chase the contractor to return to site.
Zialet Company Limited, the contractor, Thomas Zonyra Moore told newsmen, has few finishing touches to do on the clinic to make it operational, but has deserted the facility for over four years now.
The project cost the Government of Ghana GHc290,000 and the DCE, Mr Moore said was fully paid the money because the project was at the heart of the Government of Ghana and the Assembly.
“The reason Zialet Company Limited has left the site is unknown to us (Assembly) and it’s not as if we are careless about knowing his whereabouts. The Assembly is seriously looking for him to come and complete the clinic for the people of Aformanorkofe. My people should be rest assured that very soon, their clinic will become operational,” the DCE explained to newsmen after a threat by the youth of the area to picket at his residence and office should the clinic remain uncommissioned after one month.
Enumerating a few projects contractors have abandoned, after they had been paid either part or full of the contract sums, Mr Moore said the Assembly was taking records of all such projects “and when we finish, we will sue all contractors who have runaway from their project sites when they have not finished and handed the projects to us.”
Background
Awake News had earlier reported that tension was building at Aformanorkorfe in the Central Tongu District of the Volta Region as the DCE and MP continued to linger in commissioning a clinic for the community.
Aformanorkorfe, a farming community with about 2,000 dwellers, has dire infrastructural needs, so the people cover 34 kilometers to and from Adidome to access better education and health care.
Their roads too, are so deplorable that patients and nursing mothers, who need to be rushed to the Adidome Government Hospital, are carried on bicycles.
As a result of the high mortality rate in the area, the previous NDC government, the residents told Awake News, put up a health center before it lost the 2016 general elections.
To the people, the clinic had been completed, thus, seeing the structure abandoned for about five years now, without the Member of Parliament (MP) or District Chief Executive (DCE) communicating the reason for the long delay in opening the facility, it infuriated the youth to threaten occupying the residences and offices of their DCE and MP.
The people said opening the clinic would stop the routine inconveniences of travelling on bicycles from the village to Adidome for healthcare.
“This facility must be commissioned to start operation because the longer this structure is not occupied, the weaker it becomes and before long, it will develop cracks and that will be another waste of the taxpayers’ money,” Divine Woegbe, the Youth Leader of Aformanorkorfe, told Awake News as he toured the reporter round the facility last weekend.
The Abandoned health center
He said in case of an urgent health service before a patient is rushed to Adidome, the patient or expectant mother rides a pillion to the next village where some ‘village health providers’ manage the condition.
“The deplorable roads discourage commercial vehicles from coming here. As a result, some patients in emergency die on the way to Adidome. Bicycle is the commonest vehicle here for carrying patients or expectant mothers to the next village where, if we are lucky, we get some rickety car to convey us to Adidome. If we don’t get it, then we have to ride 17 kilometers to Adidome for healthcare,” he explained.
That Aformanorkorfe cannot go on that way with the health center yet to be commissioned, Mr Woegbe said, “We, the youth and people of Aformanorkorfe, have resolved to occupy the offices and residences of our MP and DCE if they don’t open this clinic for us after one month. We will inconvenience them until they get the facility working for the reason it’s put up.”
By: Umar Sheriff Musah
The Abandoned health center
