On the third day of its meeting on Wednesday, January 18, 2023, the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament ordered the arrest of two guarantors of two former employees of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital for failing to uphold bonds after being sponsored to pursue their higher education.
The former employees of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital allegedly failed to honor their bonds or reimburse GHS98,546.00 that was paid for their international studies, according to the Auditor-General’s report.
When the Minister of Health, Kweku Agyeman Manu, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Chief Director, and Senior Officers of the Health Service appeared before the Committee to respond to violations in the Auditor-General’s report for the year ended 31st December 2022, James Klutse Avedzi, the committee’s chairman, ordered the arrest of the guarantors.
In order to encourage workers to pursue higher education, Mr. Avedzi urged the government to rethink the current guarantor system.
The majority of beneficiaries, according to the Committee Chairman, do not adhere to the terms and conditions of the agreement after completing their programs, which makes it challenging for the government to recoup its investment in these employees.
He believed that the government should permit interested applicants to use banks as guarantors rather than specific people so that shirkers could be quickly identified and detained.
To that effect, members of the Committee questioned those from the Ministry of Health, NTC-Pantang, the Ghana Institute of Clinical Genetics, the Nurses Training College Damongo, and other organizations about the issues raised in the A-report.