Member of Parliament for the Tamale Central, Ibrahim Mohammed Murtala
The Member of Parliament for the Tamale Central Constituency in the Northern Region, Ibrahim Mohammed Murtala, has said that the government of the day is handling the Covid-19 pandemic with a lot of lies, ranging from massaging the number of reported cases to the procurement of vaccines to fight the pandemic.
Speaking to Berla Mundi on New Day on TV3 on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, the legislator expressed worry as to why the government would decide to dance around when there is such a deadly virus as the Covid-19 pandemic, which is ravaging through and causing distress across the world.
“There is no single country that is insulated from the dangers and devastating consequences of contracting the virus.
“It is believed by many experts that the figures we have in Ghana and in many countries are underestimated because many people do not go to hospitals when they are sick and since we stopped the contact tracing and the compulsory testing, there are people who may have died from Covid-19 and because they did not report to the hospital, we will not be able to know, so all the figures we have are estimated figures.
“The worrying aspect of it is that we have spent so much money in procuring vaccines. You know the brouhaha that came with our attempts in procuring the second vaccine [Sputnik V] and the fact that we were shortchanged and the fact that we haven’t been told the truth as to whether we are spending that much in procuring that vaccine,” he added.
Expressing his sentiments on the allegations of the Ministry of Health procuring the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine at an exorbitant price per unit of the jab at $19 instead of $10 through middlemen, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP asked “if we will have to abandon the vaccine [Sputnik V] and go in for other vaccines for the new Indian variant of the virus recently discovered in the country?”
He intimated that the plan of the government from the onset in the fight against Covid-19 was nothing but to make money and enrich themselves which led “some of us to consistently argue that the amount of money we got as a result of the testing that was done at the airport was rather done illegally and fraudulently and, I say this without any apology because you have a Minister for Health who appeared in Parliament and said the company in charge of the testing operated without licenses initially. So the company was operating at the airport without legal instrument that gave them the mandate to do so.”
He further alleged that “the figures of travelers that came through our airport for the period between September and December 2020 were inaccurate when the Minister for Transport appeared before Parliament and that also, the tests that were even running were antigen tests and not comprehensive Covid-19 testing and with the antigen testing, all the experts have said that it cannot give you a comprehensive testing and results.”
The MP also expressed bemusement and called it laughable “government claims to be fighting the virus and enforcing the safety protocols when people still come from Burkina Faso and Togo by road and no or little testing is done on them upon their entry.”