Gadangme Union in Italy and the uncleared hospital donations at the Port

I have been scratching my heard trying to understand the issue over the Gadangme Union in Italy (Emilia Romagna Branch) and their donation of goods to some government hospitals in Accra which remains uncleared at the Tema for the past 4 months.

The goods include 84 hospital beds, bedside cabinets, an ambulance and a number of items for emergency staff at hospitals.

It does seems in Ghana certain weird decisions are taken sometimes and in grave circumstances where human lives are involved and people in authority have to use their common sense to take decisions in helping a good cause they woefully and disgracefully fail in doing so.

What is more surprising in this situation is, unscrupulous official(s) appears to be looking for bribe before processing documents to enable goods intended for hospitals and help save lives to be cleared.

I am gutted but may be seen as one who doesn’t know the rules or regulations governing shipment of such materials and eventual clearance at the Port in Ghana. No matter how naive I may seem to be on this, common sense tells you these goods are donations from a group of Ghanaians abroad who felt the need to help their communities back home in Ghana and shifting some cost to them to be paid before the items are cleared from the Port and handed to the beneficiaries doesn’t make sense.

I witnessed all that happened in the course of the Gadangme Union in Emilia Romagna (Italy) and the eventual shipment of these goods and can say it wasn’t easy. This is a Union formed only 18 months ago; it has no funding from Italy or any organization elsewhere and has to rely solely on its members contributions to run its affairs. Right from the beginning it made its intentions to help with development projects in the Greater Accra Region. The Union last year sent a delegation to the Region to have a firsthand information and assessment at certain parts of Accra and its outlying localities and how best it can contribute its quota to help. The delegation came back with a report on the deteriorating nature of government hospitals in the Region (you can say that also for other government hospitals across the country), the huge problems on sanitation which is posing a health hazard and the chieftaincy disputes which has crippled development. It observed the situation at government hospitals needs urgent attention and after receiving the report put their operational machine into gear consulting some organizations in Italy about hospital beds to be sent to some hospitals in the suburbs of Accra because as it noted there are patients, sleeping on the floor of our hospitals.

The Union’s efforts paid off and did not get only hospital beds but also hospital bedside cabinets, chairs to be placed at a reception hall, an ambulance and a number of uniforms for hospital emergency staff. You can see on the faces of these Union members the desire to get these goods to Ghana to help. They felt within their heart that it will go a long way to help save some lives, not only natives of the Greater Accra Region. I saw their real efforts when it came to funding the shipment of the goods to Accra, some of them have no money and went to borrow to contribute their part whilst others had to dig deep into their pocket to help the intended cause. I can vividly remember when in two days some of them had to leave their family and whatever they have doing to load these allocated goods into a 40-feet ‘container’ to get the goods home.

If after all these the authorities in Ghana felt it’s not enough, that they should help further and pay for an additional ‘cost’ to have the goods cleared and sent to the beneficiaries then God help us.

We are living in a time that things are going wrong in Ghana and the continuous mischievous attitude of some people in authority is not halting the trend. Don’t these people who will process documents to enable these goods to be cleared at the Port know that they are donations intended for hospitals which will help save some lives? An official of the Ministry of Health in his explanation claimed that documents on the goods arrived late to the Ministry yet in 4 months they are still unable to finish processing the documents. Even that (for the sake argument), if this official’s claim is correct, why can’t somebody with a ‘head’ stand up and say: ‘look these are goods that will help save people’s lives and let’s do whatever it takes to get it into the hospitals’.

Are these authorities not aware that patients, including mothers nursing infant children, are sleeping on the floor in our hospitals inhaling unhealthy substances into their lungs and their babies which can cut short their lives? Don’t these authorities know that at some of the local hospitals outside Accra, where some of the items will be taken, pregnant women are transported to the hospital in a wheelbarrow (you may wince at that but go there and see) and an ambulance will be of great help to this society? Don’t our authorities, including the Minister of Health, know that government hospitals are most of the time without basic drugs and that people are giving prescription to go and buy medicine and materials(even injection needle) from a shop outside the hospital? And in the midst of all these one has to go through bureaucratic tendencies, also pay bribes, before clearing goods intended as donations to our hospitals. Not until we put aside these selfish and inept attitude we are not going anywhere in our reforms towards development.

The Gadangme Union in Italy experience is a turn off for many Ghanaians abroad who want to contribute towards building a nation which we can all be proud of and our Government must know that.

- Reggie Tagoe