Clean up the mess in GHS estate department

Kumasi, July 19, GNA-Dr Kofi Asare, Ashanti Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has called on the Service to ensure that its estate department completed projects already started before tackling new ones.

He was not happy with the present situation where the GHS has many uncompleted structures all over the country that are at different levels of construction, saying, "we should take what we can bite". Dr Asare was addressing a two-week course for 16 Estate Managers drawn from all the 10 regions at the Christian Village in Kumasi on Monday.

It formed part of the Danish International Development Agency's (DANIDA) health sector support programme for Ghana.

The Regional Director noted that work on some structures of the service sometimes delayed and by the time the project was finally completed the base was already weak.

He said "what this means is that just immediately after completion, there is a problem of maintenance". Dr Asare said in the face of scarcity of resources, it was important for the Service to develop a more realistic maintenance culture.

"Any symptoms of cracks or leakages would have to be fixed immediately to save our facilities from deteriorating", he added. Mr Flemming Anderson, Maintenance Advisor of the Ghana/Denmark Health Sector Support Programme, said it was a bit disappointing that the GHS sometimes used what he termed "the no money syndrome" to undermine preventive maintenance of health facilities.

Mr Andrew Oppong Dankwa, Head of the Building and Maintenance Service, Estate Development Unit of the GHS, said it was now the policy to ensure that all employees at the managerial level were trained in preventive maintenance.