Party Doctors?

Two hundred and fifty senior high school leavers emplaned to faraway Cuba a few days ago, leaving behind them the knotty question about the opportunity cost of their mission to the nation and above all its integrity.

The cost of GH�160,510,000 involved in seeing the students through Cuban medical schools for the six-year duration of the programme has compelled Ghanaians to question the sense or otherwise in entering into the deal with the Cubans.

Juxtaposing the cost against that of the one involved in training doctors locally boggles the minds of many Ghanaians.

We wish to make it clear that we are not downgrading the quality of Cuba-trained doctors but we are largely disturbed about the cost when four medical schools in the country, when offered the appropriate funding, can expand facilities to increase intake of medical students and make the option under review unnecessary.

Given the standing of doctors in our society, against the backdrop of the many qualified students seeking admission to the available medical schools, the intake is highly competitive and would remain so for a long time to come, we acknowledge.

That is why there is sense in expanding the facilities in the existing medical schools and avoiding the outright profligacy in the Cuba option.

The selection process of the students has come under considerable query, with some Ghanaians regarding the project as the most profligate and divisive in recent times, in the neighbourhood of the smelly judgment debt payment.

The partisan touch of the whole exercise using the public purse, particularly, makes for worrying observation at a time when the country is reeling under the effect of doling out unnecessary judgment debt payments for no work done.

The then Health Minister, Yileh Chireh, appended his signature to the deal as Cabinet, under the chairmanship of President Mills, okayed it as though oblivious to its stinking implications.

If the cost involved is a pain to the Ghanaian taxpayer for our students, it is an unfair deal devoid of the equal opportunities right.

The discriminatory nature of the choice of beneficiaries of the largesse adds to the challenges of partisanship facing the nation today.

Limiting the choice to the children of the membership of NDC caucuses, ignoring others who do not belong is the most dastardly action by persons at the helm of the state.

The exercise was devoid of accessibility to all Ghanaians, shrouded in a deliberate and weird opaqueness to shut off Ghanaians on the other side of the democratic divide.

The isolation of the Ashanti and Eastern Regions� Akan-dominated areas gives the exercise an unfortunate ethnocentric coloration as though the NDC is non-existent in those parts of the country.

We shall surely return to this subject which stinks to the high heavens. They have been dubbed party doctors and we have no reason to question the sense in the tag.

Source: Daily Guide