The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has been granted two-week leave to enable him to attend to some personal issues.
Reports indicate that the request was granted by the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare.
He officially began the leave last week.
Earlier reports suggested that the Minister had resigned from his position, but the Health Minister in a Facebook post dismissed the report saying "kindly treat it with the utmost of contempt it deserves."
The Health Minister has come under intense criticism for breaching procurement processes while trying to secure Sputnik V vaccines for Ghana.
READ ALSO : In the name of God sack Agyeman-Manu – Martin Kpebu begs Akufo-Addo
Pressure group OccupyGhana has added their voice to calls for the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu to resign.Â
According to OccupyGhana the emergency situation created by the pandemic and the urgency required does not constitute sufficient reasons to for the Health Minister to bypass parliamentary approval, cabinet approval, Public Procurement Authority approval or ratification and the endorsing advice of the Attorney-General, all of which are required by law.
"We are further struck that although payment was made under the transaction, the Minister said he did not know about it, as at when he testified before Parliament. Contrary to this claim, the Health Minister was copied in the letter from the 31 March 2021 letter from Acting Controller and Accountant-General to the Bank of Ghana requesting BOG to make the advance payment to Al Maktoum from the Health Ministry’s accounts. That letter also referred to a 25 March 2021 letter from the Ministry of Finance, obviously authorising the payment, and which must have been copied to the Health Minister.
"It is unbelievable that at each of these stages of payment requests, the accompanying, supporting documents did not include the approvals mentioned above. It beggars belief that the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance, Controller and Accountant-General and Bank of Ghana would payout government monies without seeing or demanding to see any of the stated approvals.
"It is on the basis of the foregoing that we demand that the Health Minister resigns from office. Even if he meant well under emergency circumstances, those did not justify bypassing our constitutional and statutory processes. If the Health Minister does not resign of his own accord, then we call on the President to relieve him of his post," the pressure group said in a statement released on Monday, August 9, 2021.