GHANAIAN ENGINEER DYING IN SOUTH AFRICA

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, October 09 2015 

A young Ghanaian Engineer has been left to his fate by Baker Hughes, an American oil and gas services company operating in many African countries including Ghana.

The helpless Andrew Boateng is an engineer with Baker Hughes Ghana but was doing rotational work in Congo and Gabon.

He was said to have been involved in a terrible accident in Gabon in the company’s vehicle on official duty on April 2014 and was subsequently airlifted to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, whilst in coma.

Later, when he regained consciousness he reportedly spent a couple of weeks at the hospital and was first moved to a nursing home and finally to another home for the aged called Serenity Home, also in Johannesburg, when the company stopped catering for his needs.

Human rights activists in South Africa drew the attention of DAILY GUIDE to the plight of the Ghanaian engineer.

An activist who did not want to be named said “Andy has been lying in poor hospital facilities in South Africa and no family [member has visited him] for over a year. He cannot eat, walk and talk. Right now he is in old people's nursing home and there is no physiotherapy or good nutrition.”

The activist said “a friend of mine who is a former employee of Baker Hughes asked for my assistance to be visiting Andy since I am based in South Africa; but after seeing him, I was moved by how such big corporations making millions of dollars in Ghana could have abandoned a Ghanaian citizen in a foreign country and be playing hide and seek games.”

 “We need to put public pressure on Baker Hughes and other companies operating in Africa. There is a huge neglect of the African physical and human resources by these companies,” the activist added.

Baker Hughes is said to have been in Ghana since 2009 and has been providing drilling and evaluation, completions and production, pressure pumping, downstream service, fluids and chemicals as well as reservoir development services in the booming oil and gas sector.