The Airport Company has released data showing that COVID-19 testing at airports has resulted in $84 million in revenue for Frontiers Healthcare Service.
It was reported that during this time period, Ghana earned a total of less than $6 million from arrival testing and GH1.5 million ($180,000) from departure testing.
This uneven distribution of revenue shows that Frontiers kept more than 90% of the money made, keeping 92% of the money from arrival testing and a significant 94% from departure testing.
Ghana’s share, on the other hand, was very small—less than 10% of the total revenue—with only 7% coming from arrival testing and only 6% coming from departure testing.
A shocking offer letter from the Ghana Airport Company Limited to Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited for COVID-19 testing at the airport was recently brought to light by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the ranking member of the foreign affairs committee in parliament.
Details provided by Ablakwa are as follows:
1. Frontiers was handpicked in an opaque sweetheart deal after a hush-hush discussion;
2. Ghana’s procurement laws were blatantly and violently flouted. In fact, Ghana’s procurement laws were suspended.
3. This was not a competitive exercise as credible institutions such as Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research, Korle Bu Central Laboratory and others who were at the forefront of the COVID containment were sidelined as government opted for the overnight incorporated dubious Frontiers;
4. This letter incredibly reveals how an offer was made to Frontiers on 31st August, 2020 and how actual testing magically commenced the next day, September 1, 2020. Something to soon feature in Guinness World Records;
5. In a total rip off, the government per the offer letter asked for a fixed share of a measly and wickedly unpatriotic $10 per test as Frontiers keeps $140 per test considering that Frontiers was charging each passenger $150;
6. Shockingly, Frontiers was asked according to the offer letter to make a paltry and insulting payment of only $97,109.00 as proof of acceptance of the offer for an exclusive control of the Upper Arrival, Terminal 3, KIA — regardless of the fact that Frontiers stood to make and has indeed made profits worth hundreds of millions of dollars;
7. Despite this outrageous giveaway, Frontiers was exempted from paying water bills;
8. The offer letter did not provide technical specifications, standards and the specific amount of investment Frontiers was obliged to make in setting up the testing facility which actually exposes how everything was skewed by government officials to collude with Frontiers in raping Ghanaians;
9. The offer letter made no reference to mandatory authorization from the Health Facilities Regulatory Authority (HeFRA) as a condition precedent which explains why Frontiers commenced work many months before it applied to HeFRA for licensing after my original exposé;
10. From the intercepted offer letter, Frontiers was granted an unfathomable long duration of 2 years to loot, create and share; and that was regardless of whether Covid is defeated in a few weeks or not. This also explains why Ghana was basically the only country still testing at the airport many months after airport authorities in many other jurisdictions had stopped and dismantled their testing systems;
11. The evidence is overwhelming that this Frontiers deal was a grand operation between a buccaneer government and lootocratic entrepreneurs to make a fortune at a time many were being killed and hospitalized by a devastating pandemic.
