News:
June 24, 2021
The Minority in Parliament has described the COVID -19 testing contract between the government and Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited, a private company as a deliberate effort at ripping the state off revenue.
The Minority is of the view that for a government that has appealed to the private sector and individuals to contribute to a COVID Trust Fund to help deal with the pandemic, it would have been prudent to engage the Nugochi, to perform this at a less cost to the state.
Addressing the media at a press briefing in parliament, Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu indicated that that agreement was so poor and insensitive to the state to the extent that out of a colossal $16.3m dollars that accrued for charging travellers US$150 for the less sensitive and inferior antigen test, between September to December 2020, only a paltry $1million was handed the Kotoka International Airport and the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, who are partners in this whole arrangement. The rest goes to the private company, Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited.
“Government, you could sign 20 – 80, 60 – 40, 70 – 30 agreement, you are still not the dominant player but 16 million dollars for 1million dollar, when Nuguchi could’ve undertaken this exercise and other countries are undertaking this cheaper”, the Minority Leader indicated.
And noted that Noguchi was in a better position to carry out the testing and use the proceeds to improve its institutional capacity and be more prepared to deal with such investigative health demands on the country in the future.
“We have always been of the opinion that an institution like the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research should have been given that contract instead of a veiled foreign owned company whose ownership we cannot clearly delineate.”
And also expressed surprise that neither the Minister of Health, the Ghana Health Service nor anyone in authority seems to know the processes that led to the award of that contract, even as they continue to demand answers about the whole contract.
“We wish to serve notice that the NDC caucus has prepared a motion demanding a bi-partisan parliamentary enquiry into the Frontiers affair”.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com