Please editor let my voice be heard

Dear Ghana web Editor , I beg of you to please publish this article. I am a nursing student in Bolgatanga and it has been about two weeks since the discussion about the leadership of our Regional Health Director has been in question. I heard about the articles and went on Ghana web. In fact, as a result of what I have seen on the Ghana web, I am obliged to also add my comment this discussion.

I want to congratulate Titus for his boldness in being the spokes person for the concerned youth of the upper east. It is not easy to come out to say anything negative about Dr. Awoonor-Williams. The reaction from the Upper East Region Youth Association was filled with threats that are just a small example of the threats that Dr. Awoonor-Williams uses select local bullies to put on the out spoken ones who speak against him in this region. As a nursing student, we have to work in the regional hospital and everything that Titus said is on point. There are more facts that I cannot bring out here because I will be seen as a “faceless” person as the Awoonor thugs are purporting. So I am begging for the top ranking officers in the health sector in this region to please come out with the facts and supporting information to bring out the truth of corruption and "Kalabule" leadership of Dr. Awoonor-Williams.

The reasons that the youth association gave for honouring Dr. Awoonor-Williams is mostly for the renovations that he has made to buildings and cars that he has brought for the district health directors. What you all have to know is that the Director of health in his very clever way does all these openly generous gestures and therefore expects that no one questions his other heartless acts of leadership.

The heartless acts include the embargoes on salaries. Some of us do not even know why embargos have been put on our salaries and we dare not ask. Those bold to ask are given reasons that do not make sense and it ends there. The issue of nurses not being able to get fuel to go into the communities is true. We are a community of workers and a youth association is not the one to tell us that we do not have problem getting fuel. We have seen that the Regional Director of Health wants to leave a legacy infrastructures not based on development, but based on the fact that he wants to bring a reality his dream of being director general of Ghana Health Services which he has been boasting is his next target. We the health officials here know that is why he is continuously rallying people to do media campaigns in his praises. We have witnessed him do it since he came to this region. We have been quiet and gossiped about it, but it is obvious that some of us are fed up. Or maybe some of us have been used and abused for too long. So now we have branched out to speak out. I hope that this gets to the head office so they make efforts to investigate all these accusations. I do not want to be sacked from school so I cannot come out and give my name. I am only pleading that something is done to take a closer look at the leadership of this man. It is very troubling. The feeling is that he has renovated buildings and brought cars so we cannot critisise anything questionable about him.

At nursing school, for example the senior students were forced to seek accommodation outside the school because we appealed to the Regional Director of Health to reduce lodging fee by allowing us to remove the feeding component from that fee. We were very happy when he said he will meet with us, the outcome of the meeting was that he would not allow us to pay only lodging minus feeding and for us to feed ourselves. His solution was that if we would not pay the fee, then we should move out of the training school housing facility and find housing our own. Some of us have come from other regions like Volta region, Accra, Ashanti regions etc. We were then forced to look for housing in a few months. It did not bother Dr. Awoonor-Williams one bit. Then to even make us feel worse, some of us were selected to go and serve and be ushers at the regional Health administration review party, we served the director and his top officers while we wondered if our problems were indeed of any concern to the director. We have been afraid to complain to our representing body because we would be targeted by Dr. Awoonor Williams.

I called Titus to thank his group and he told me about how he has received death threats and other threats of being monitored. As a poor nursing student who is not from Bolgatanga, I am faced with the dilemma of not being able to hold myself up if the regional director of health and his spies decide to make life uncomfortable for me.

But in this capacity, I will like to set the record straight that the nurses who had problems with Dr. Amiah was because Dr. Amiah does not tolerate lazy workers. Titus was right about Dr. Amiah’s principles. If he tells you there is an operation at nine o’clock, he will be there at 8:45 am or 9:00am the latest. Therefore if a nurse or anyone on the operation team is late, he will not only shout, he will embarrass you to make sure that you do not repeat it. Some of us are parents so we do not appreciate being talked to like that, but what is important to Dr. Amiah is the patient’s best interest. So also, in a case where a nurse does not treat a patient with urgent attention, then the nurse will get harsh caution from Dr. Amiah. We miss him at the hospital because, now the Regional Director has also made himself the Acting Medical Director and there is casual attitude toward work. People come to work and do work if they really want to. When we complain of a shortage of medical doctors, we are shut up with the answer like what the upper east region youth association said. Dr. Awoonor says that he has negotiated for doctors to come to the region and that they are training. The sure number is always FOUR, like the youth association said in their reaction. It is a fan fair of false promises and patients are the ones suffering. I cannot talk about the operations that he has done and most of the patients have died the ones I know are five patients who did not survive his operations. I know of the ones in the Bolgatanga regional hospital but I hope that the Navrongo Hospital people will come out with the ones he had done there. It seems like a lost case because we see it happening right under our noses, but then we are nobodies for anyone to listen to and by the time we are even listened to, our daily bread will be hard to get. We are too afraid to make this move. People like Noble Alagskomah, (0248977818) have sworn allegiance to the regional health director because his Chemical store is on the premises of the regional hospital. When Dr. Amiah was medical director of the regional hospital, Mr. Alagskomah tried to win Dr. Amiah’s heart in effort to stop government from demolishing his chemical store which is on the hospital's land. Principled Dr. Amiah did not comply with his plea. Dr. Awoonor-Williams came to the region as the new health director and Alagskomah has been safe since, because he became the loyal ears and eyes of the regional director in exchange that his business stays on the premises of the regional hospital and other reasons. So this is one of the reasons why the “local failure Alagskomah,” as they call him, was able to get people to campaign against Dr. Amiah’s transfer.

For people like Alagskomah, it pays to be one of the regional directors boys so he will threaten and do anything to make the regional director of health look good as a STERLING, EFFECTIVE, HONEST, TRANSPARENT AND ACCOUNTABLE LEADER. Transparency under his leadership is something we do not have in the regional health administration.

Please do not read this as Upper east region do not like development. Development is not just renovations of buildings and buying of cars. What is going on in the health administration is like when you see a big building with a nice compound of flowers and plants. The house is painted and looks new. But when you go inside, the reality is that there is no running water, electricity, furniture etc. The house is not ready and one cannot live comfortably in the house. But you will not know unless you go inside and take a closer look. That is what is happening in the upper east regional health administration under Dr. Awoonor-Williams.

The many casual workers that he claims to have hired full time-- He called those casual workers and staff for a meeting and told them that he has been to Accra to fight hard for them to get on the Single Spine Salary Scheme so they should be patient with him. He had previously asked that the casual workers are not paid until he comes back from Accra and that he wanted to meet them. The announcement of the Single Spine is what he came to tell them. I thought the Single Spine was supposed to be straight forward, nothing that has to be fought for. In that meeting, one of the workers asked if they were going to receive Wellington boots and raincoats as they got in the previous years during the rainy season. Dr. Awoonor’s quick reaction to this plea was that they receive salaries, so they should go and buy some. This is the heartlessness he shows naturally when he knows camera men are not around to put it in newspapers.

This is just a few of what we are experiencing here. The people of upper east are crying for redemption in the leadership at the health administration, please come to our aid. There is the need for real accountability and transparency and most of all eradication of corruption in our health administration. The current leadership of Dr. Awoonor-Williams is a Wolf in a Sheep’s coat. Call me faceless. I am a helpless human being who has been called by God to add my voice to what concerned people of upper east region are crying for. Please Minister of Health come to our aid.

Felix Baah"