Agenda 111: 67 hospital projects to kick off by end of March

The government says it anticipates having at least 67 hospitals on the Agenda 111 district projects working by the end of March 2022.

During a news conference yesterday, the Project Manager for Hospital Projects under Agenda 111, Kwabena Nyarko, explained the progress of work on the sites, saying finding suitable sites for the project had caused some delays in construction.

He said distance to utility services, no heavily forested areas, lack of streams or water bodies, among other things, were criteria considered for the proposed sites.

Land acquisition

Mr Nyarko said that the programme had been divided into eight zones covering the entire country. Each zone has its supervising consultant responsible for the day-to-day work supervision on the sites.

According to him, since the announcement of the initiative in April 2020, a lot of work has gone into identifying sites. He added that the teams worked with the District Assemblies as well as traditional authorities in identifying suitable sites.

“That exercise took quite a bit of time, and finally we got a number of sites that were suitable. In certain places, we still couldn’t find alternative because there all kinds of local issues. There are other areas where there’s still no sites for those locations. Those are primarily in the Greater Accra. For example, in Nima, Adenta…we need 15 acres, and we cannot find 15 acres of lands for that,” he explained.

“There are also cases where the district assemblies offered the site, but there are issues with the traditional authorities,” he added.

According to Mr Nyarko, “out of the 101 district hospitals that were designated, 92 sites have been identified and are available for work. 41 of those had some challenges mainly because of the terrain; but we have to look at some alternatives for that. Fifty-one of those are fine and 63 of those cites have been cleared and ready.”

“We believe that, hopefully, by the end of March, we will have at least 67 of these sites that are working on the agenda 111 district hospital projects. Each hospital has a completion time of about 18 months and the 18 months is from when the project starts from a particular location,” he said.

Payment to contractors

The Project Manager further disclosed that the government had paid 138 of the contractors the mobilisation fee to begin work.

“The contractors, the plan is to pay them some mobilisation (10% of their contract sums).138 of those [contractors] have been paid, and they are mobilizing to sites. Work has started in at least 10 sites,” he stated.

About Agenda 111

The Agenda 111 project is part of a plan by the Akufo-Addo administration to ensure that 101 outstanding districts will be provided with hospitals in addition to 10 selected regional and specialised hospitals.

It is expected to take 18 months to complete from the commencement of each unit, with a funding of $100 million from the government through the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF).

Each of the hospitals will cost $16.88 million, with $12.88 million being used for the construction of the hospitals and $4 million for medical equipment.