Former Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor has revealed that he suffered from high Blood Pressure (BP) following the persistent energy crisis, known in local parlance as ‘Dumsor’.
“Around November to December [2015], my health deteriorated, when I was coming to pick up this job [Power Minister], I had no BP but at a point in time, it rose to 220/130…all this contributed to me resigning to go and cure myself,” he revealed on Adom FM’s Morning Show, ‘Dwaso Nsem’ on Friday.
The Pru East Member of Parliament (MP) was the toast of the President during his State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Thursday.
President John Mahama showered praises on him for working to ensure that the energy crisis which lasted for more than 3 years and led to the death of many and collapse of several companies comes to an end.
“I salute the former Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, and his Deputy Minister John Jinapor and their team of competent technical people. Mr. Armah Kofi Buah and his team at the Petroleum Ministry I salute them. But much work still needs to be done to give us the comfort of sustainable generation going forward,” the President said.
Prior to the President’s commendation of the former Power Minister, a Lecturer at the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, Dr. Isaac Owusu-Mensah sparked controversy by naming Dr. Kwabena Donkor as the best Minister under the Mahama administration.
His argued that he selected Dr. Donkor over the rest because he set himself a target which he hoped to achieve but was man enough to resign when he failed to achieve it.
“Kwabena Donkor is my best Minister so far under the Mahama administration…no Minister has been like him under this adminstration…he was true to himself and none of the ministers has been this truthful…he did not achieve the benchmark and because of that he resigned because he failed to achieve it…if all the Ministers set a benchmark and achieve it half way, Ghana would not have been where it was…,” he argued.
But Kwabena Donkor said on the Morning Show that he did not achieve the target on a silver platter as according to him, it had to take him several sleepless nights to work with his team he named ‘Team Excellence’ to end the power crisis.
And this, he said, contributed to him developing the ailment.
President Mahama was also given a similar dose of sleepless nights as he was always called upon at odd hours when anything went wrong in the power sector.
He however stated that he was humbled by the President’s commendation
“I was humbled…for the whole world to be watching and President mentioning your name, I was indeed humbled but the President deserves more commendation because I used to call him around 1:00am anytime problems arose because he is the senior minister of power,” he said.
With his BP back to normal levels, Dr. Donkor said he would gladly embrace any job offered him by the President in his administration.
“If my lord, the President asks me to go and serve somewhere, I can’t turn him down because we are in politics to serve,” he said.
Dr. Kwabena Donkor resigned from the Ministry on the last day of the year 2015.
Source: Adomonline
posted from Bloggeroid
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