Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng and Dr. Nana Ayew Afriyie
The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is baffled at President John Dramani Mahama’s dishonesty over the controversial GH¢1690million Cuban scholarships deal, especially with the changing figures about the whole transaction.
In a bid to ‘set the records straight’, President Mahama, who brokered the deal with the Cuban authorities, claimed at last week’s IEA presidential debate that it cost the Government of Ghana (GoG) an amount of $5,000 to train each of the 250 Ghanaians in Cuba in the area of medicine for a period of six years, adding, “It is cheaper than training a doctor in Ghana.”
This was an attempt to rebut claims by the presidential candidate of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to the effect that the cost involved in training the students in Cuba was too much and that they could have been trained in Ghana at a relatively lower cost and the money used to expand the facilities in the medical schools.
The issue has since been a subject of raging controversy between members of the NPP who believe the president was throwing dust into the eyes of Ghanaians, as the cost involved was more than what President Mahama quoted.
The leadership of the NPP issued a statement in Accra yesterday, rubbishing the president’s claims. It insisted that “President John Dramani Mahama lied to all Ghanaians on live national television when he said it was costing Ghana ‘only’ $5,000 a year to train a single student in Cuba.”
The statement, which was signed by leading members of the party’s campaign committee on health, led by Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng and Dr Richard Anane, Dr Nsiah Asare, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, Ras Boateng and Afia Appiah, noted, “No good negotiator would have committed his nation to such a deal without satisfying himself of the cost of the obvious alternative” and that “such is the nature of the regular recklessness with which deals associated with this president has been done”.
The group quoted portions of a secret cabinet memo dated August 2011 from then Health Minister Joseph Yieleh Chireh to support its claim.
Facts On File
The memo, which was titled ‘funding the services of the Cuban medical brigade under the revised Ghana-Cuban medical cooperation’, among other things, stated, “The cost of training a senior high school as a medical officer in Cuba is Cuc30, 750 (GH¢50, 660.12) per annum, made up of tuition and living expenses.”
“For the 200 students that are proposed for training in Cuba, this will work out to GH¢10, 132, 024.00 for each year. For the six years’ training, this works out to GH¢60, 792, 144.00,” Yieleh Chireh stated.
The memo further indicated, “The cost of training a specialist in Cuban is about GH¢48, 189.12 per annum and for the 50 proposed for training, this works out to a total of GH¢2,409, 456. For the estimated duration of training for four years, an overall budget of GH¢9, 637, 824.00 will be needed.”
They therefore described the president’s claim as “a blatant lie”.
This, they noted, was because “according to the Ghana Medical Association, it would cost $36,000 (GH¢72,000) to train a Ghanaian doctor for six years”, insisting that “the Cuban deal means one doctor is being trained at $151,980 (GH¢303,960) for the entire six year period.”
The group wondered whether the president crosschecked his facts to satisfy himself that the Cuban deal he committed the nation to was cheaper than the alternative of training doctors in Ghana since “if he did, with the benefit of all the facts before him, he couldn’t have made that false statement at the debate that the Cuban deal was cheaper…unless, of course, he deliberately said so to deceive the people of Ghana”.
The NPP gurus compared the deal with a similar one between Cuban authorities and the Namibian government, noting that the cost of training one Namibian doctor in Cuba under an identical scheme was $13,748.52 a year.
However, the deal struck by President Mahama puts the cost of training a Ghanaian student in Cuba at a whopping $25,330.06 per annum, nearly twice what the Namibians are paying.
Credibility
The NPP gurus insisted, “The president must explain to Ghanaians why we are paying so much more than our southern African neighbours” because “comparing the two deals, the cost of training one Namibian doctor in Cuba would cost $13,748.52 or GH¢26,957.03 and the cost of doing the same thing for a Ghanaian student in Cuba is $25,330.06 or GH¢50,660.12 per annum.”
AFAG Angle
Chairman of pressure group Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), Dr Nana Ayew Afriyie, also expressed similar concerns at a press conference in Accra yesterday, saying, “The figure that they set straight confidently was nothing than the convenient truth”, adding that the selection criteria was not nationally representative.
Dr Afriyie said, “Noting carefully all the research we have done and the documents we had; we thought the president was very economical with the truth on the figures and it was important for Ghanaians to know what was involved by holding them accountable to the documents that AFAG had.”
The NPP promises to, among other things, train doctors locally when voted into government and expand existing medical schools whilst establishing a national institute for biomedical sciences where medical students would have their basic sciences courses.
At the same time, the party promises to equip regional hospitals to enable them to provide clinical training for graduates from the National Biomedical Institute, in addition to constructing new regional and specialist hospitals and upgrading all existing regional hospitals and accredit them to take on more students in clinical training.
Aside that, it has given indications to fund local postgraduate medical and other health staff training to build the requisite and qualified staff to handle all faculties, whilst investing in the country’s medical schools to train more doctors in Ghana and encourage the private sector to establish health training institutions, including medical schools.
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