COVID-19 test: Frontiers Healthcare Services gained $84m while Ghana got under $7m

It stated that Ghana received a mere sum of under $6 million from arrival testing and GH¢1.5 million ($180,000) from departure testing during the same period.

This disproportionate revenue distribution shows that Frontiers claimed over 90% of the earnings, retaining 92% of income from arrival testing and a significant 94% from departure testing.

Conversely, Ghana’s share was meagre, representing less than 10% of the total revenue, with just 7% coming from arrival testing and a mere 6% from departure testing.

Earlier, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the ranking member on the foreign affairs committee in parliament released an exposé to shed light on what he deems a bombshell offer letter from the Ghana Airport Company Limited to Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited for the testing of COVID-19 at the airport.

This explosive Ablakwa in a letter revealed the following:

1. Frontiers was handpicked in an opaque sweetheart deal after a hush-hush discussion;

2. Ghana’s procurement laws were blatantly and violently flouted. 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 the 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 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 was 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 plutocratic entrepreneurs to make a fortune at a time when many were being killed and hospitalized by a devastating pandemic.

He noted that conservative analysis of passenger traffic statistics available on the website of the Ghana Airport Company shows that during the 2-year period of Frontiers’ scam operations — there were an estimated 1 million arrivals at KIA.

“Factoring eventual reductions from $150 to $50 only for ECOWAS nationals, Frontiers and those vampires who fronted for them must have raked in not less than US$ 130 million in killer profits. This happened during a public health crisis,” he added.

Meanwhile, Ablakwa said he will in subsequent publications release more documents on this unconscionable killer Frontiers scandal.