A Democracy and Development Fellow on Public Health at the Centre for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD-Ghana), Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, has attributed the inability of public hospitals to pay their electricity bills to the necessity of charging unrealistic fees for their services.

His response comes following the disconnection of several hospitals in the Bono East region by the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCO) due to their failure to settle electricity arrears amounting to millions of cedis.

Kwame Asiedu suggests that unless public hospitals are permitted to charge realistic fees, they will continue to operate at a loss, accumulating debts in the process.

He said, “Health is a public service good and public service goods are not supposed to run at a profit, at best we’re supposed to run and break even. But I can understand also that someone sitting down will say, why can private hospitals and other government health facilities like the religious health facilities pay for their electricity and still survive?

“So why can’t the public sector pay? Then the question arises, is the public sector hospital charging realistic fees? The answer is no, we all know that. So then the cookie starts to crumble because you want them to pay realistic fees but even from parliament’s fees and charges they’re not allowed to charge realistic rates for health.”

Kwame Sarpong Asiedu further highlighted that the failure of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to settle debts with public hospitals is worsening an already critical situation.

He explained that the government's ongoing capping of NHIS funds has left the scheme cash-strapped, making it unable to fulfill its debt obligations to public hospitals. This financial constraint is exacerbating the challenges faced by public health institutions, including their ability to settle utility bills.

"The NHIS funds are not coming. We know the NHIS is indebted to these hospitals. Why are the NHIS funds not coming? It’s not coming because since 2017 the same government that is telling these hospitals not to pay has capped the funding to NHIS so the fund doesn’t have liquidity to pay these hospitals,” he said.

The Minority in Parliament is urging the government to reverse its directive for public hospitals to pay their own electricity bills using their internally generated funds. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu, criticized the policy, deeming it outrageous and calling for its immediate reversal.

He said, “At least as for hospitals they must be exempted from these disconnections. They have to be exempted especially as this is a new policy. They have to be exempted.

“I mean imagine preterm babies who are in incubators and then they disconnect, we’re just killing the children.

“It is crucial, it is about human life, it is about the right to life and the earlier this policy is reversed, this new policy which started June 2023 which is alien to our country, since independence we have never had this policy. It’s so alien it must be reversed.”