Agenda 111: US$6 million payment was not for Adjaye alone – Okoe-Boye explains

• He said the amount indicated on the budget review represents a number of payments made to different contractors

• He listed some of the processes and institutions that worked on the design

Bernard Okoe-Boye, the former deputy minister of Health has clarified processes that led to the issuance of the $6 million contract for design works on the Agenda 111 project.

Bright Simons, the honorary Vice President of IMANI Africa alleged in a social media post that government paid Adjaye Associates, $6 million to design all the 111 hospitals.

“Following the protest by some Ghanaian architects about the hiring of David Adjaye to design 111 clinics for Ghana Govt, I took a quick look. The $6 million for the designs came from COVID funds. I also learnt that masks; sanitisers for students 2 stay in sch cost the Govt $100m,” he tweeted on August 26, 2021.

Explaining what he believes led to the above quoted figure, Bernard Okoe-Boye highlighted the various processes that resulted in the final design.

He disclosed that these processes at every stage required payment as the contractors were offered certain amount of monies for work done.

In a detailed explanation on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana on Thursday, August 26, 2021, Okoe-Boye who was armed with a document from the Ministry of Health mentioned some of the stages the project went through which contributed to the final figure.

“If a cheque was written, not all the money went to David Adjaye for the design. There are quite a number of activities that went into it. We have the project consultant, the topographical survey and geo-technical investigations. This is part of the pre-contract services.

“There were visit to 88 sites across Ghana, preliminary designs completed and approved by the Ministry of Health, detailed design and specifications. Price bill of quantities, conditions of contract, project implementation manual, among others,” he said.

Okoe-Boye appealed to the institutions which were engaged by government on the project to come out and clear the mischief around it.

“We have people who want to do propaganda so all those who have been engaged in these duties must come and speak to the public,” he said.