Health Minister's Revelations On CMS Fire Misleading---Segbefia

Former Health Minister, Alex Segbafia is accusing his successor, Kwaku Agyemang Manu of mischief for suggesting that the previous administration attempted to shield suspects in the fire that razed the Central Medical Stores (CMS) in 2015.

The former Minister described as “totally false” the claim by Mr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu that the John Mahama government also attempted to sabotage investigations, by clearing the debris of the burnt facility.

Speaking Friday on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Mr. Agyemang Manu said: “When a place gets burnt and you go and do investigations and you say that they should go and do forensic audit and then you hire caterpillars to clear the site, and at the same time ask that we do a forensic audit, with what on-site evidence are we going to do a forensic audit?”

He asserted “that is the basis of my suspicion. That they were complicit, they wanted to destroy evidence and then they will just stall the progress of information” adding that it took him three months to lay hands on the report.

Firefighters struggling to put out the flame.
According to Mr. Agyemang Manu, almost all the country’s international donors were outraged by how the previous government handled the incident and were unwilling to supply drugs as they did previously.

However, Mr. Alex Segbefia said the report was contained in a separate envelope, captioned “confidential” handed to the ministry.

Mr. Segbefia challenged the basis of the claim by his successor that he or any politician in the previous government attempted to conceal the report of the investigations conducted by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) when copies were also sent to the Attorney-General’s Department to initiate prosecution of the named suspects.

“At no point, as far as I am concerned, has any political person hindered any progress of any investigation…A whole investigation was carried out and a report was produced by these investigators [CID] upon which a statement was produced and read by the A-G's Department.”

The only reason why prosecution delayed Mr. Segbefia explained, is the instruction by the A-G’s Department to the CID to produce further evidence that would give the A-G enough grounds to mount a prosecution.

He wondered why nobody is asking the CID “where is the evidence upon which the AG would act?”

Partners pull out
Corroborating the statement by the Health Minister that most donor partners were unhappy with the failure to prosecute in the CMS fire incident and threatened to cut their support to Ghana, the former Minister admitted the donors were frustrated by the development.

Mr. Segbefia, however, explained the decision of donors to cut supplies was mainly premised on the ground that Ghana had attained a lower middle-income status.

“The stumbling block to their [donors'] assistance to us was that Ghana was now a lower middle-income economy and GAVI [Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization], Global Fund [and] all of them were reducing and continue to do so, the amount of money that was going to be given to us in terms of donor funding,” he argued.

Although he commended the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government for successfully brokering a deal with the donors for their continued support to Ghana, the former Minister noted, the NDC administration also initiated such discussions before it went out of government after losing the 2016 elections.

“It is good that we have been able to continue to negotiate with these international communities and get some of these results but that is not peculiar to the new government; we have done same” Mr. Segbefia maintained.

Background
The fire, possibly the worst in the country’s history, per investigations, occurred a day before a planned action to institute sanity into the Store’s management system following revelations of malpractices and irregularities there.

Medical supplies estimated to cost some GHS80 million at the time, were all destroyed in the fire that took almost three days to bring under control .

National Security was tasked to, among other things, identify the cause of the fire, establish whether or not there was foul play and if there was, determine the person or persons involved.

National Security discovered during its investigations that the fire was deliberately set, and one Samuel Dogbe, a labourer was named as the suspected arsonist.

“Samuel Dogbe was paid to set the fire in order to destroy the evidence,” the report noted.

But shortly after these revelations were made, then Health Minister, Alex Segbefia disclosed at a press conference in Accra that the suspect was on the run and was being sought by security agencies, a reason why no prosecution has been made till date.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Jerry Tsatro Mordy | Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jerrymordy