[ 2017-01-19 ]

Korle-Bu board questions management for paying themselves GHC153K bonus
Four board members of the Korle-Bu Teaching
Hospital have questioned the basis on which the
Hospital management members paid themselves a
total amount of GHC153,000 as bonuses without
recourse to the board.

Investigations by 3FM’s Sarah Parku unraveled
the payment of over GHC100,000 to the nine
management members including the chief executive
officer, Dr Gilbert Buckle who received
GHC21,000.

Seven other management members, who are directors,
received GHC17,000 each while the Head of Internal
Audit of the Hospital also received GHC 13,000.

Chief executive of Korle-Bu But the four members
of the board have expressed surprised at the
payment saying they only approved GHC100 for each
of the over 400 employees of the Hospital as for
end of year party.

According to the four who were government
appointees on the Korle-Bu board, the Hospital’s
management never submitted to it any proposal for
the payment of bonus to the directors and
management members under its two-year tenure.

The board indicated that in view of the financial
difficulty faced the Hospital, it never operated
any bonus scheme. “It therefore came as a shock
to the four Government Appointees that a colossal
amount of over GHC100,000 had been paid to only
nine directors, six of them executive directors on
the Board and very much aware that such a proposal
should have come to the Board for consideration at
the last meeting of the Board held on January 4,
2017,” they said.

Making reference to ethical behaviour and best
practice of corporate governance, the board held
that directors of public institutions lacked the
capacity to determine their own compensation and
pay without recourse to its board.

“As such the payment of the so called allowance
to themselves [Korle-Bu management] is a flagrant
violation of these principles and practices,”
the board stated, and dissociated itself from what
it described as “unauthorised payout” to the
management members.

“We, the four Government appointees on the
erstwhile Board, are convinced that the conduct of
the CEO and the eight Directors amount to exercise
of bad judgment and insensitivity to the citizens
of Ghana and the 4000 workforce and current and
future patients of KBTH,” they held.

Read the full statement issued by the four members
of the board

PRESS STATEMENT FROM THE FOUR GOVERNMENT
APPOINTEES ON THE ERSTWHILE BOARD OF KORLE BU
TEACHING HOSPITAL (KBTH). Re: UNAUTHORISED PAYMENT
OF GHC 153,000 TO THE CEO AND 8 DIRECTORS OF KORLE
BU TEACHING HOSPITAL (KBTH)

The attention of the four Government Appointees on
the erstwhile KBTH Board has been drawn to a story
making the headlines to the effect that over GHC
100,000 had been paid to the Chief Executive
Officer (CEO), Dr. Gilbert Buckle and EIGHT (8)
Directors of the hospital as end of year bonus.

We wish to place on record that the Board approved
only GHC100 per employee of KBTH for End of year
party and Awards Night as part of Employee
Recognition program and a motivation strategy.

It must be reiterated that Management never
submitted to the Board any proposals for the
payment of bonus to the staff including the
Directors and management for the two years tenure
of the dissolved Board because KBTH does not
operate any bonus scheme as a result of its
precarious financial situation.

It therefore came as a shock to the four
Government Appointees that a colossal amount of
over GHC100,000 had been paid to only nine
Directors, six of them Executive Directors on the
Board and very much aware that such a proposal
should have come to the Board for consideration at
the last meeting of the Board held on January 4,
2017.

It is instructive to note that the recently
dissolved Board assumed the leadership of KBTH at
a time the institution was in turmoil and dire
financial straits.

The Board during its tenure and over the last two
years worked strenuously even as it was confronted
with monumental challenges from within in its
efforts to solve the myriad problems facing the
country’s Premier Referral Hospital.

Our preoccupation was to get KBTH to work and
transform Korle Bu to the Centre of Excellence
that it is meant to be.

The Board’s resolve resulted in the
establishment of the Korle Bu Trust Fund in 2016
to mobilize some financial resources to invest in
physical structures, equipment and general
facilities that Korle Bu urgently needs to deliver
an improved patient care that was the vision of
the Board.

The Board took some strategic initiatives to
revamp the dysfunctional financial system aimed at
plugging all the financial leakages that had
plagued the hospital over the years resulting in
lack of consumables, inadequate equipment,
malfunctioning of others and total lack of
others.

The focus of the Board was to instill fiscal
discipline in the management of KBTH finances and
that revenues collected should be efficiently
utilized especially on patient care.

The Board during its tenure implemented some key
strategic initiatives to improve revenue
collection in an institution which was not
change-ready. The following were accomplished:

1. Cash point billing and collection of revenue by
two Banks instead of one bank to improve
efficiency in revenue collection.

2. Phasing out of the collection of unapproved
fees into unauthorized departmental accounts to
leverage revenue collection

3. The Board as part of the fiscal discipline
measures decided on the following: a. No travel by
the Board outside Accra to conduct Board Business
b. No international travel by any non-Executive
Board members during the 2 years tenure.

The Board to incentivize staff introduced free
Medical care to staff and four dependants in March
2016 and approved Employee Provident Fund to be
rolled out in March, 2017.

Huge financial resources would be required to
sustain these staff welfare benefits and for nine
Directors of KBTH to dole out GHC 153,000 to pay
themselves an allowance of GHC21,00O to the Chief
Executive, Dr. Gilbert Buckle and GHC17,000 each
to 7 other Directors and GHC 13,000 to Head of
Internal Audit, at the expense of a workforce of
close to four thousand employees who toil to
generate the internal revenue and at the blind
side of the Board lacks equity, fairness, and
transparency .

Ethical behaviour and best practice of corporate
governance posit that Directors of a public sector
institution do not have the capacity to determine
their own compensation and pay without recourse to
its Board as such the payment of the so called
allowance to themselves is a flagrant violation of
these principles and practices.

In as much the four Government appointees on the
erstwhile Board disassociate themselves from the
unauthorised payout to the CEO and nine Directors,
the good people of Ghana, who constitute the
shareholders of KBTH, we believe, need answers to
the following questions:

1.Who authorized the payment to the CEO, Dr.
Buckle and the other eight Directors who are all
non –clinical staff?

2. What criteria was used to determine the nine
beneficiaries out of approximately 4000 workforce
of KBTH?

3. Why no payments were effected during the two
years tenure of the erstwhile Board and payment
was effected at the time the Board was exiting?

4. Whether in the name of good conscience, equity
and fair play they have been fair to Mother Ghana
and the clinical staff who work under strenuous
conditions to save lives and make money for KBTH
for the CEO and other eight Directors to spend on
themselves instead of patient care which is the
core business of KBTH? In conclusion, we, the four
Government appointees on the erstwhile Board, are
convinced that the conduct of the CEO and the
eight Directors amount to exercise of bad judgment
and insensitivity to the citizens of Ghana and the
4000 workforce and current and future patients of
KBTH.

The beneficiaries who constitute the leadership
and management of KBTH by exercising this bad
judgment have lost all the moral authority to
provide the transformational leadership KBTH is in
dire need of to sustain the reforms the erstwhile
Board initiated.

If decisive and prompt action is not taken KBTH
will drift back into the near ungovernable state
the immediate past Board was confronted with when
it assumed duty in September 2014.

Signed, Prof Anthony Mawuli Sallar

(Past Board Chairman) Other Past Government
Appointees

Mr. Henry Atta Paidoo.

Hon Kempes Ofosu Ware.

Mrs Perpetua Kafui Annan.

ISSUED on Wednesday 18th January 2017.

Source - 3news.com

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