Authorities at Bekwai Municipal Health Directorate in the Ashanti Region are lamenting land encroachment at the site of the local hospital under construction.

Private developers have taken over almost half of the 153-acre land allocated for the municipal hospital project.

The 120-bed facility whose construction started in the 1970s has seen long delays due to funding constraints.

In August 2019, parliament approved a 2-million-dollar facility for the completion of the project which is now 90% complete.

Contractors say baring any hitches; the project will be handed over to government in November.

Ahead of that, concerns about private developers illegally taking the hospital land is prominent as there are fears the situation if allowed to persist, could expose people to risk in the event of radiation leakage and also thwart future expansion.

Deputy Administrator at Bekwai Hospital, Eric Frimpong, says offenders have defied repeated warning to desist from building close to the hospital morgue. 

He briefed Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, on a visit on July 13 that: "the land that was allocated for this contraction was about 153 acres as I am speaking to you now, the community has taken more than half of this land and some have even built closer to the mortuary. And you know the health implications to that."

He further explained that “we’re going to have X-ray machines and you know X-ray machines come with some form of radiations. And if the community is going to build so close to the hospital they can have some kind of health hazards that will affect them.

That’s why government in his own wisdom decided that let us get a big compound or a big land so that if the hospital is on one side, the rest will not be used by anybody and if there’s the case of an accident of radiation leakage, people will not be affected. And it is also going to affect the future expansion of this hospital,” Mr. Frimpong said.

He added that, “All the people concerned have already been communicated to; the MCE has been written to severally, we have spoken to the MP, the Omanhene too, we have also written to our regional director for their interventions.”

Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Mnau says the issue will receive attention as a committee is set up to ensure protection of such property

“As for encroachment is concerned, as we speak Pantang is a place, Cape Coast is a place, Tema is a place. Just when we went to see the treatment centre that is started here we were talking about encroachment.

"So what do we do? We have a committee now in the ministry looking at how we can protect, we may have to put up fence walls across all our facilities but that is a massive investment as well, so we are looking at that and we are fighting them as and when we gather the strength,” the Minister emphasised.