The Coalition of NGO’s in Health has described the request by the National Ambulance Service (NAS), to postpone the commissioning of some 211 ambulances from January 6 as dangerous.

According to the Coalition, the development is not good for effective healthcare delivery in the country.

Speaking to Joy News, President of the Coalition Gabriel Bernaku, said the public is at risk.

“The public officials are playing with Ghanaians lives because they are the same people who advised the President,” he said.

This comes after the service called on President Nana Akufo-Addo to halt the commissioning scheduled for today, January 6.

In a letter shared on all media platforms, the service appealed to the President to shift the date of the commissioning to January 28 instead.

Their reasons for the petition being fitting the vehicle with trackers, insuring the vehicles as well as training paramedics who will work on the ambulances.

However, Gabriel challenged the reasons given by the NAS describing the entire situation as “confusing”.

“Are they not aware that three months ago the ambulances were there? Couldn’t they have organized the trainings with those 70 ambulances so that these ones could easily be dispatched? Everybody is lying to Ghanaians and we are not happy about it,” he lamented.

A total of 275 ambulances which were promised by the Akufo-Addo led administration should have been ready by April 2019 yet they arrived in September 2019.

They have since remained parked at the forecourt of the Parliament House awaiting authorisation and dispatch to the various constituencies.

Meanwhile, there have been several reasons given by authorities to defend the decision to leave these ambulances parked since September 2019.

In the face of this, concerned groups mounted pressure on government to release the ambulance and soon enough the President promised to commission them on January 6, 2020.

On January 3, 2020, the Ghana Ambulance Service petitioned government to postpone the release of the ambulance.

Although there has been no official communication from government in response to this, the ceremony to commission the ambulances was not on government’s agenda for Monday.