In keeping to the mandate of oversight, the Parliamentary joint Committee on Health and Lands and Forestry has visited the Pantang Hospital.
The visit follows recent agitation of the staff over the encroachment of developers on lands belonging to the Hospital.
At the time of the visit, some encroachers were seen busily building.
This prompted the joint committee to direct that construction works on the hospital’s lands be suspended immediately.
The Director of the Hospital, Dr Frank Bening, told journalists that the encroachment on the lands of the hospital was only a fraction of the challenges that bedevil the facility.
He said that funding was the greatest challenge owing to the failure of successive governments to allocate the required resources to the facility.
He lamented the current indebtedness of the hospital which he said stands at GHs3.5m.
Dr Bening concluded that, until something was done about the sprawling private development of their land and the financial difficulties facing the facility, a time may come where the hospital cannot live up to its mandate.
He expressed shock at a court ruling two weeks ago that a section of the 344 acres Pantang Hospital land developed in 1967 belonged to a private developer and called on the committee to intervene before the hospital lost its entire space to private developers by the courts.
The Chairmen of the Health and Lands and Forestry Committees of Parliament, Dr Kwabena Twum Nuamah (MP, Berekum East) and Francis Manu Adabor (MP, Ahafo Ano South East) briefed the media after touring the area indicating that parliament were going to invite all stakeholders in land administration to find a solution to the encroachments that has hit the facility.
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By: Duke Mensah Opoku/citifmonline.com/Ghana