Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has come to the defence of his embattled colleague minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, whose role in a botched vaccine procurement has been raging for the past weeks.
Ofori-Atta insists that the Health Minister meant well when he entered the now abrogated agreements for the supply of Russia-made Sputnik V vaccines.
“I kind of have listened to the argument and sort of on hindsight…I think there is so little empathy in appreciating what my colleague minister must have been going through,” he told Asaase Radio on August 5.
He recounted how Agyeman-Manu in his opinion had gone out of his way to ensure the safety of Ghanaians at the time of a raging pandemic and when vaccine supply lines were heavily constricted against most African countries.
Ofori-Atta also praised the efforts of the Ministry in securing the initial doses of AstraZeneca and spearheading the successful rollout by the Ghana Health Service.
He added: “To be so unsympathetic to someone who felt like what can I do to ensure that there is continuity and to sit now comfortably …. I am empathizing with him and I expect that others will realize the type of pressure that he was under and his commitment to ensure that the Ghanaian people are safe.”
The latest on the Sputnik V saga is a Parliamentary committee report that has tasked Ofori-Atta to retrieve in excess of 16 million cedis Ghana paid to an Emirati vaccine contractor. The Minister is on record to have said: “We will always get our monies back.”
Agyeman-Manu came under enormous pressure when during his appearance before the committee last month, he said he wasn’t thinking properly when he entered the deal for the vaccines.
