Research Fellow at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, says there is a lot more rot in the ambulance maintenance contract than has been exposed publicly.

According to him, ambulances are not merely vehicles but critical pieces of medical equipment.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on July 27, he explained that when new medical equipment is purchased, it typically comes with a service contract to ensure it remains under warranty.

“For a product to be under warranty, the supplier or the manufacturer which in this case is Mercedes Benz, would want there to be service contract so if the product becomes defective under the period of the warranty, you can exercise your right under the warranty either for it to be repaired or replaced," he said.

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Mr Asiedu pointed out that without a service contract, some medical equipment suppliers may refuse to sell, while others might only offer the equipment without warranty protection.

“When the ambulance came and we didn’t have anything like that, it made me very worried because we have a poor maintenance culture in Ghana as it stands and we had seen that with the national ambulance service, there were ambulances prior to these ones which had broken down and we were failing to repair.”

“And I felt that, having spent this amount of money, we didn’t need to allow these ambulances to suffer the same fate. So I kept asking, only for us to find out that as at 2019, there was no service contract and we went into a contract with this company.”

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Mr Asiedu noted that since Mercedes Benz has local agents in Ghana, it raises questions as to why the maintenance contract was awarded to a company without a proven track record.

He questioned whether the company had the necessary skills and resources to properly maintain the ambulances, which are specialized medical equipment.

“Often, the company that will supply you with the ambulance will train staff of the ambulance service authority to be able to do some aspect of the calibration and other things.”

“By and large, I think there are lot more question that are being asked. I worry because we are treating these ambulances like just normal vehicles where you change oils and spark plugs. This is bigger than that an therefore, we need to look in seriously. Have we breached dour warranty? So I think there is possibly a lot more rot in this story than we actually see,” he said.