The Paramount Chief for the Lower Dixcove Traditional Area, Nana Kwesi Agyemang IX, has urged the government to urgently mobilise the requisite funds to operationalize the Ahanta West Municipal Hospital at Bokoro in the Western Region.
He warned that the facility risks deteriorating if it remains non-operational.
Nana Kwesi Agyemang IX stressed that it is government’s responsibility to ensure the hospital does not waste away, saying: “If structures are put up and not being used, the rate of deterioration is fast.”
“So, they can at least provide something so work can start there,” he added.
His remarks follow a threat by the Takoradi based pressure group Advocacy for Citizens Ghana to picket at the hospital premises and demand that it be made fully operational.
The hospital, commissioned in December 2024 by former President Nana Akufo Addo as part of the Agenda 111 project, has since remained largely abandoned due to logistical and contractual challenges.
Reviewing the investment sunk into the project and the current state of the facility, Nana Agyemang IX said it would have been prudent for the government to develop the hospital in phases.
“People who come there… how are they going to be serviced? If a little of the funds had been left to cater for the initial items needed to start it, it would have been better. Otherwise, the development could have been done in phases… and with time, you expand it,” he critiqued.
He also warned that the cost of procuring the required biomedical equipment could exceed that of the physical structure. “Seriously speaking, if you look at the cost of the machines that are needed, it would be more than the building,” he said.
Meanwhile, Western Regional Minister Joseph Nelson has disclosed that the contractor is owed substantial sums of money—explaining why the facility has not been put to use.
He recounted learning of this challenge during a 2025 visit to the site, which he undertook alongside Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh.
“In that visit, it came to light that the contractors are owed some huge sums of money by government, and because of that, they’ve not been able to fully complete the project. So, the structures that you see there are just structures without equipment,” he said.
“We had been told prior to assuming office that the facility was completed, but when we got there, the story was different. Empty rooms with no equipment at all—and so nobody can call that facility there a hospital… because a hospital is a facility that operates as such. It is not what is in the name but what the facility does, and as we speak, there is nothing there that will indicate to anybody that this is a hospital ready to run,” he stressed.
In March 2025, government announced that an estimated GH¢140 million is needed to fully equip and operationalize the Bokoro Agenda 111 hospital.
The Finance Minister subsequently reaffirmed the government’s commitment to completing all stalled Agenda 111 hospitals, with priority given to ensuring the completion and operationalization of ten (10) of the abandoned facilities that are over 70 percent complete.
By Abraham Mensah
