Former Minority Chief Whip and a member of the Health Committee of Parliament, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka

has described as disrespectful, the absence of the Health Minister to appear before the House over vaccine shortages in the country.

According to the lawmaker, the Minister, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu must be subpoenaed for disrespecting the Health Committee of Parliament.

“…Everything else can wait but not the expanded programme on immunization because the killer diseases, once you don’t get immunized to a certain period, you endanger all of us. This is something that the children will miss, and you can’t easily correct it. So if such an important matter will come before the committee, and the minister is invited, and he doesn’t show up, I just believe that Mr. Chair, I’m of the firm belief that, this committee should issue a subpoena. We are mandated, not only by the constitution but by our own standing order,” he said.

Why is Muntaka livid?

Kwaku Agyemang-Manu and some heads of agencies failed to honour the summons by the Health Committee of Parliament today over the shortage of vaccines for immunizing children in Ghana.

For the past few months, the Northern Region and other parts of the country have been experiencing vaccine shortages, with no solution in place.

The Chairman of Parliament’s Health Committee, Nana Ayew Afriyie, invited the Minister of Health and other agency heads to an emergency meeting on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, over the worrying situation.

But, apart from the National Health Insurance Authority, the Health Minister and the agency heads were unable to attend to the committee’s invitation.

The absentee agencies have not given tangible reasons for not honouring the invitation except the Health Ministry’s chief director who indicated that the Ministry has written a letter to the Committee asking for an extension.

Reacting to that, Muntaka insisted that the Health Minister cannot dictate to Parliament on when he want to appear before the Health Committee.

“Now, you have a Minister of Health who for me, for lack of a better word, I will say disrespectfully refused to attend to the invitation of the committee. It tells you how he is running the Ministry. It is just unfortunate that we have a government that a lot of its actors are behaving as though they are doing the citizens a favour by occupying those offices,” Muntaka added.

“They must mandatorily appear. Mr. Chair, they cannot tell us when they want to meet us. That is not acceptable.”