The Minister of Inner-City and Zongo Development, Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, has intimated that the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) policy to build mortuaries for Muslims is a waste of resources since, it will not be in use.
He, however, iterated that the NDC, should have promised the Zongo communities an established regime within the hospitals, that allows Muslim corpse to be released early for burial rituals.
This statement comes on the back of a promise by the NDC that when voted into power, will provide a support system to the existing mortuaries, which is an attached morgue for hospitals in Zongo communities.
Dr. Abdul-Hamid, cited the Tamale mortuary which is one of the most populated towns, with the highest number of Muslims, iterating that the mortuaries services in Tamale are mostly without dead bodies.
Touching on fighting corruption under the Akufo-Addo government, Dr. Hamid said that, “we have reiterated that the kinds of money, budgetary allocations that our government has made to these anti-corruption institutions, is being three, four folds over what other government have done,” he revealed.
According to the former Minister of Information, he posited that most anti-corruption institutions had lamented over the years due to lack of resources to properly execute their duties and fight corruption, but the NPP government have provided enough funds to aid the fight against corruption.
He however, refuted claims that, the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo was asked to proceed on leave due to mysterious reasons. He noted that every worker is privileged to proceed on leave and, if it is time to go on leave, then the law must be adhered to. He said that it had no relationship with pushing back on corruption.
Touching the ministry’s achievement in dealing with early child marriage in the Zongo communities, Dr. Abdul-Hamid posited that per research at the Department of Education at the University of Cape Coast, part of the reason why people give away their daughters early, for marriage is because of the lack of facilities and resources to educate these children to the highest level.
The Zongo Minister also stated that people always weigh between educating the boy child and the girl child, but conclude that, monies should be invested in the boy child so he gets educated, abandoning the girl child.
Buttressing his point, Dr. Abdul Hamid reiterated that the ‘free SHS’ policy is a huge leap in the efforts towards preventing early marriages in the Zongo communities, “so now all the girls are able to go to school without an excuse that, they were not well educated,” he added.
He however iterated that in addition to the Ministry of Inner-City and Zongo Development, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection have been actively engaged with the phenomenon of dealing with child marriage.
“I have read a few cases where they have even gone and rescued children who were forcefully married because of poverty. Let me come back to the point, if you interview the parents who give their young girls out for marriage, they always make the point that, they are doing so because of poverty, sometimes, because a richer man will be able to then take care of their family. So, one of the fundamental ways of taking this phenomenon out within our society, is also to address the phenomenon of access to education.”
Comparing the projects of the NDC and NPP in the health sector, Dr. Abdul-Hamid iterated that healthcare is not the establishment of building empty shells which he stated doesn’t cure people. But rather, healthcare is the capacity to assist health institutions provide better services.
“Otherwise, why we would just go round the country and put up empty shells and then people don’t have access to healthcare. When we came, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which has proven to be the biggest intervention in our health sector in many decades, was on the brink of collapse. It owed the service provider GH¢1.2 billion. By December 2016, hospitals were no longer taking NHIS cards and we have been able to reverse that phenomenon.”
