Castle Halts Police Hospital

Plans by the police administration to expand the police hospital to encompass the location occupied previously by the headquarters of the Forestry Commission have been halted by the castle.

The order was handed down to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, when he was summoned for an emergency engagement at the Castle over the matter, and virtually instructed to steer clear from any attempt to expand the health facility.

Even though the Police Director of Public Affairs, DSP Kwesi Ofori, was struggling to deny the report, documentary evidence available to the Daily Guide newspaper shows that the government is asking the police to keep off because it intends to use the land for something else.

Describing police intentions to make use of the vacant location as forcible action, correspondence from the office of the Chief of Staff, dated 2nd September, 2009, claims the place had already been allocated to two organizations African Biofuel and Renewable Energy Fund (ABREF) and the Public Sector Reform Secretariat. This has kept all initiatives in place to expand the facility in limbo.

“The letter under reference, as you would recall, seeks your ministerial intervention to stop the Ghana Police Service from its alleged forcible take-over of the government buildings formerly occupied by the Forest Services Division of the Forestry Commission, located at the Danquah Circle, Cantonments, near the Police Hospital and the UNDP offices, Accra”. It stated.

But the police did not give in immediately, as it insisted it had the legal rights over the property in question.“The legal basis of the formal allocation of the government buildings which constitute the subject-matter of this paper takes its historical source from part of the key recommendations of the President Commission into the Ghana Police Service appointed on 21 February 1996 under the Chairmanship of Philip Edward Archer, a retired Chief Justice”.

The police response continue: “We take this position given the fact that the Service had as far as May 1999 been given the necessary legal tendering and procurement processes to award contracts to a Construction Company for the necessary renovations to be carried out on the buildings. Our interest in the buildings must therefore take precedence over all others. So far, about 40 per cent of the works have been completed”.

Before the Castle’s ‘Stop Work Order’, Paul Tawiah Quaye had given the green light to the hospital administration to go ahead with renovation to facilitate the extension of the infirmary, with the understanding that a Presidential Commission had given the site to the police under the regime of President Jerry John Rawlings over thirteen years ago.

Recently, journalists were shown the new facility ahead of the commencement of work for the extension of the hospital. The police hospital had been under intense pressure, prompting authorities to call for an aggressive expansion of the existing facilities.

But in spite of the Castle directive, artisans contracted by the police were spotted still working on the project as at yesterday.

As the brouhaha continued between the police and seat of government, reliable sources have whispered to Daily Guide that the property, allegedly acquired by the two organizations, has actually been sold.