Kwabena Minta Akandoh, Vice Chairman of the Sputnik V vaccine probe committee, has disclosed that the involvement of the Attorney General in the procurement of the Sputnik V vaccines was immaterial.

According to him, this is so because the health minister executed the “contract before resorting to AG for their advice”.

Mr Akandoh’s statements follow the committee’s probe into the health minister’s procurement contract for Sputnik V vaccines for the country.

The Juaboso legislator further revealed that as part of the committee’s recommendations submitted to parliament, they were supposed to determine whether the transaction were of international nature, and concerted to.

“So, what it means is that, the advice of the AG was immaterial. It had no effect on the contract because the contract had already been executed. After that, the AG wrote back to the ministry, indicating to them that, they should have come to parliament for the prior approval of parliament before that contract will be valid”.
Kwame Mintah Akandoh

Sole source procurement of vaccines

As part of the committee’s recommendations, Mr Akandoh explained that they were to also determine whether procurement processes were followed.

With this, he revealed that the health minister undertook a “sole source procurement” and the minister ought to have fulfilled the demands of the clause of the act.

“…if you go to the public procurement act, those specific provisions that allow the minister to do sole sourcing means that you must satisfy the section 40 (1) and 40(2). 40 (1), you must come with public notification and then you must also have the prior approval of the public procurement authority.

“Unfortunately, the minister signed the contract somewhere on 9^th March and after a month later… he wrote to the public procurement authority to ratify the agreement for them. Then, the public procurement authority wrote back to the minister that they want to investigate him because he needed prior approval from them”.
Kwame Mintah Akandoh

Following this, Mr Akandoh noted that the contract agreement hasn’t been “ratified by the PPA”, further emphasizing that “the procurement laws of this country were breached”.

Cost of Sputnik V vaccines

Commenting on the controversial cost of the vaccines negotiated for by the health minister, Mr Akandoh intimated that the committee was to ascertain whether there “was value for money”.

“So, on that point too, we realized that the manufacturers of Sputnik V, had communicated to the whole world that the international market price per dose should not be more than $10. So, we took it from that and the minister said that, yes, he was aware. We also went further to find out whether he saw nothing wrong with it, he said yes, he saw everything wrong…”
Kwame Mintah Akandoh

That notwithstanding, he explained that the Health Minister insisted that was what “his negotiation could afford him”.

The committee, the Juaboso legislator hinted, has finished its work and submitted the report to parliament.

“We debated it and it was left to the Speaker to put it to vote. Unfortunately, that has been deferred. But in the course of debating reports of the committee, we on the minority side sought to amend the motion to include censorship, which of course, our rules allow us to do that”.
Kwame Mintah Akandoh