President Akufo-Addo says over 20,000 health professionals will secure jobs under the Agenda 111 hospital project.
According to the president, about 25,000 people will also be provided with jobs during the construction of the hospitals which started today.
“We have cooperated into this agenda a strategy of direct and indirect jobs to stimulate the economies of the various communities in which the facilities are to be located. These include the creation of an estimated 25,000 jobs during the construction and design phase i.e. jobs for architects, civil mechanics, electrical and biomedical engineers, quantity surveyors, masons, carpenters, welders, steel benders, painters, and related professionals and artisans as well as other indirect jobs.
“Once completed, it will provide job opportunities for some 20,000 health professionals and this will enable the Ministry of Health to recruit doctors and nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals,” the President said at Trede in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region where the project is commencing.
Meanwhile, the Medical fraternity has expressed doubts about the government’s ambition to complete 111 district and regional hospitals within a year.
Speaking with GHone News ahead of Tuesday’s sod cutting at Atwima Nwabiagya district of the Ashanti Region, the Ashanti regional president of the Ghana Medical Association Dr. Paa Kwesi Baidoo said, he will applaud the president if he is able to complete the project in two years.
He said the president can’t be taken seriously after failing to walk the earlier promise of building 88 hospitals in a year.
“We were here last year, we were promised 88 hospitals within a year and we all know what happened and it is being explained that he said when it is started but that wasn’t it, we all heard what he said.
“As a doctor and a labor leader, until I see the actualization of this project, I mean until I see I see the completion of these projects…until all these things are done I cannot sing the praises,” Dr. Kwesi Baidoo told Ultimate FM’s Isaac Bediako Justice.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh