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Opinions of Saturday, 5 December 2009

Columnist: Concerned Hospital Pharmacist

FDB Falling Apart

*FDB IS FALLING APART UNDER CLUELESS OPUNI*

There is something rotten in the FDB.

Since Opuni took over everything is going to the dogs. I cant believe that President Mills could actually put someone like Opuni in charge of a technical place like FDB. The man is just a party apparatchik! He was an executive member of Ashanti NDC who use to do propaganda for the likes of President Rawlings. Such party people shouldn’t be placed in posts like FDB chief executive which requires some technical or at least managerial experience to handle.

Look at the recent withdrawal of 22 anti-malarials – completely incompetent! They gave the batch numbers and just told the manufacturers to go into the market and withdraw them. What a joke! What about hospital dispensaries, private clinics and other resellers? How are the manufacturers going to know where each batch has eventually ended up? Who thought Opuni that this is how recall is done? Has he done any batch control exercise before?

I am not saying you cannot be an FDB boss if you are not a pharmacist. But at least you must have had some management experience. Opuni as a surgeon only had a leadership stint as head of the trauma and accident center at Komfo Anokye. He never received even a single management training in this job. The man has not even managed a single project in which he had to write a report before and this man is head of FDB?

As soon as he came to office he started trying to witch-hunt. People like Ofosu who have been running administrative tasks for years were undermined and clueless people brought to the top floor to help him in his clueless management, and now see how clueless the whole FDB has become.

The last straw that is breaking the camel’s back is the attempt to blackmail Alex Dodoo to back down on his campaign for accountability at the FDB. The cooked up charges wont stick someone should tell Opuni. Opuni wont even answer to the legitimate board, because he thinks he is a big party man who can always run to the castle and cry that “NPP elements” are trying to get him. Getting Kunbuor to sign that embarrassing letter that Dodoo was being investigated may seem smart, but he is numbering his own days except that he doesn’t know.

All the workers at the FDB are now complaining. The man is just a joke who has no knowledge about modern regulation. We are watching him very closely.

Those cronies of his who have been taken bribes from big importers to turn a blind eye to imported medicines without registration certificate are also being put on notice. See how people are dying and suffering from fake drugs in this country, why should President Mills put someone clueless like that in charge? Someone who has never pursued any professional or academic training to update himself since becoming a surgeon. Just because he is part of the NDC Ashanti mafia?

I am saying it here that Opuni is not qualified for that job. He should submit himself to a television or radio discussion program on any serious subject to do with medicine regulation if he want to challenge this assertion that he is not fit for the job. He will be stripped naked! Look at how he has been embarrassing himself when he talks about regulation in meetings.

Opuni thinks he can hide his incompetence behind hostile and arrogant behaviour. Just a few months in office and he is already fighting traditional medicine practitioners, hospital pharmacists, the FDB board, and everyone who tries to question him about issues going on at the FDB. No wonder the Standards Board is doing their own thing and launching their own standards conformity assessment for medicines, because the FDB has become a laughing stock.

Yes Agyarko was a politician who sometimes said more than he could do, but he had some management skills. Opuni is mediocre. He presides over incompetence like withdrawing medicine through announcement of batch numbers on radio. Does he think this is a joke?

The government better listens and remove Opuni before the whole FDB collapses like a sack of cocoyam. Ghanaians cant die for nothing. A word to the wise is to the north.